Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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

If you want to report a JavaScript error, please follow this guideline. Questions about MediaWiki in general should be posted at the MediaWiki support desk. Discussions are automatically archived after remaining inactive for 5 days.

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

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

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This tends to solve most issues, including improper display of images, user-preferences not loading, and old versions of pages being shown.

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This would interfere with usability, accessibility, keyboard navigation and standard forms. See task 3864. There is an `accesskey` property on it (default to `accesskey="f"` in English). Logged-in users can enable the "Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page" gadget in their preferences.

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You can use a web browser such as Firefox, which has a spell checker.

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Bug on Special:TopicSubscriptions?

What I'm talking about (please click on it to see it more clearly)

Please see the screenshot on the right. It appears that I subscribed to the same conversation twice (on WT:WPAFC). Justjourney (talk | contribs) 19:59, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

How it happened: so when I replied to that thread, it automatically subscribed me, but the [subscribe] link suggested that I wasn't subscribed to the conversation.

What I did after posting this: I unsubscribed to both topics, and then subscribed manually again, and that seemed to fix the issue. Justjourney (talk | contribs) 20:02, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

DiscussionTools subscriptions use a section's first comment username+timestamp as the key, rather than something like the section title. When subscribing to this section, did you hit subscribe, edit your comment's timestamp, then hit subscribe again? Or cut and paste it from somewhere? I think something like that is more likely than a bug. Anyway, you can click "Unsubscribe" on the row that has the wrong timestamp to get rid of it. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:29, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Collaboration or task tracker utility

In a wiki project, I need to ping many users to work on a new draft. One of them takes it. Others need to be unpinged somehow. (like in phabricator: tag a task with "foobar", all members of foobar group get a notofication, one of them marks it as assigned to themselves, and others know that it already taken. There is a board showing list of untaken tasks.) Is there some such mechanism on-wiki? Thanks. Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 10:44, 22 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The editors could just add the board to their watchlist. We use a related method at Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests: each request is posted, and editors mark the request with {{Working}} and then {{Done}}. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:21, 22 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 17:51, 22 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello,

1) The main issue with just using article talk pages: no way for a group of users to subscribe to a new article. Is this fixable? I would like to subscribe to all articles created at my wiki, or perhaps to all articles created at my wiki which belong to a certain category.

2) Is there a way to automate transclusion/inclusion of multiple pages? Say, include all pages which belong to a certain category. Or something, IDK. Usually an article is discussed at its talk page, but if nobody looks there (if 1 is not solved), need a way to post from article talk to a 'Mega All Discussions Village Pump'. May work for a small wiki. Hm.

cc @Jonesey95 @Polygnotus Regards, -- Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 05:09, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Translating module across wikis

Hi everyone,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Use this_project_language as an index into a table of translations.

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

local xlate_institutions_t = {
	xx = {																		-- translations for <language name> (xx)
		PE = 'EP',																-- European Parliament; translated from xx language to default (en)
		},
	}

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

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

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

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

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

You have to export it.

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

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

ERRORTypeError: Load failed

I keep getting ERRORTypeError: Load failed after trying to retrieve data from virus total for my script I don’t know what to do to fix this •Cyberwolf•. talk? 16:45, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It’s put a stick in my wheel I can’t understand what’s wrong •Cyberwolf•. talk? 18:01, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Cyberwolf First problem is that the API address should end with "urls", not "url". Beyond that, you may run into CORS errors since VirusTotal doesn't send CORS headers, so you may have to run the API calls through a CORS proxy hosted somewhere like toolforge. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:06, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

How can i set up a tool forge cors proxy? •Cyberwolf•. talk? 18:13, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Cyberwolf I'd start by reading the toolforge documentation. There are many possible implementations, but a quick google search shows that cors-anywhere is popular. You'd need to follow the instructions at wikitech:Help:Toolforge/Node.js to set up a Node.js webservice and then install cors-anywhere. There are third-party CORS proxies available, but it's a security risk to use them because they could theoretically rewrite any of the returned data, steal your API key, etc. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:52, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Eh I don’t understand/ don’t have a pc around so I’m postponing the project indefinitely •Cyberwolf•. talk? 20:29, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I tried 3rd party stuff (security isn’t really a focus cause an api key is free, data isn’t really valuable yet or ever will be) but it either needs the POST format which none support or its simply not possible to send information via the proxy ie api key, application, url etc. I have contacted VirusTotal and I’m hoping to get a response tomorrow as I believe the best approach is to not focus on client/middleman solutions but solve it on server side so no one has to do this •Cyberwolf•. talk? 03:28, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What process generates this type of Talk page heading: "Question from USERNAME (12:34, 5 June 2026)" ?

What process generated this discussion at a User talk page?

I have seen this format on User talk pages, from other users asking questions about Wikipedia. Is this coming from a mentorship program, or from the Talk page owner having signed up somewhere as a volunteer newbie-helper, or where exactly? There are many such queries at this User talk page, with ten appearing this month and destined never to be answered, most likely, as this user last contributed in March.

For the sake of other users needing answers to their questions, I would like to sever whatever connection this user has to some question-answering service, at least until the user comes back. But where is the connection? Just paging Sage (Wiki Ed) in case this is something from the Wikipedia Education program, but I don't think so. If not, then who? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 19:49, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is coming from w:WP:Growth team features#Help panel. Any admin can mark them as "away" via Special:ManageMentors, which I've now done and should cause questions to be directed to other more active users instead. There needs to be a more systematic process to handling this, though - I've been manually marking inactive users as away whenever I get around to it, but I'm using a way too loose definition of "away" and shouldn't be the only person doing essential tasks,. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:12, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) This looks like it might be generated by the "Help panel" described at mw:Growth/Focus_on_help_desk. See also mw:Growth/FAQ#Help_panel, where this feature is described, and Special:CommunityConfiguration/HelpPanel, where en.WP is configured to send Help panel questions to mentors rather than to the Help desk or Teahouse. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:13, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for helping with this, @Pppery! I agree—it would be great if the Mentorship system automatically removed inactive Mentors. While the WMF Growth team has been focused on other priorities, I’m hoping to make time soon to work on some of the top mentorship-related tasks. Here are a few that come to mind:

Feel free to chime in if you have any thoughts on the top priorities for improving Mentorship. And thanks again for assisting with so much of the essential work behind the scenes! KStoller-WMF (talk) 21:06, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The particular editor you pointed out here is still around and about, incidentally.

There may be an extension feature request to reassign mentees automatically after some arbitrary activity date, and/or mark as inactive, or whatever else you can do in the panel (as measured by things in Special:Contribs). I guess we could spin up an admin bot for it. Izno (talk) 20:28, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Added mw:Talk:Growth#Dealing with help panel-generated questions to absent mentors, and linked this VPT discussion. Mathglot (talk) 22:16, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Satellite background for OSM maps

Hi, is there any way to show satellite background for OpenStreetMaps in Wikipedia? For example, if we want to change abstract background of this map

to a satellite background like this link: https://www.openstreetmap.org/edit#map=11/29.6430/52.5342 what should we do? Thanks, Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 12:37, 24 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

OSM has a separate license for satellite data for the sole purpose of mapping locations. We do not have such a free license (nor would bing give it to us) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:36, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@TheDJ You said that:

nor would bing give it to us

Why? I asked a question from Google here. Their answer was that the license is "from 3rd party providers". Why can't Wikipedia provide such license from "3rd party providers"?

Because, I think "satellite map" is not a highly modern technology nowadays. We use them very commonly for our everyday life.

Providing some satellite image is very vital, because it improves Wikipedia articles significantly.

Finally, I propose that Wikipedia pursue granting license from "3rd party providers". The same as Google, I think they grant permission to Wikipedia. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 08:32, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

How much funding do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should allocate towards this? It would be very expensive, and potentially disruptive to the satellite mapping industry. CMD (talk) 08:39, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"How much funding" is a very good question. Please ask a third party map provider that how much Wikipedia should pay for satellite maps. If it is reasonable, I think it worth paying.

Satellite map technology is related to many decades ago and is not a blood edge one. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 08:45, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia would not just be paying for satellite maps, it would be paying to relicence said maps into one of our applicable licences. That is a vastly different proposition. CMD (talk) 09:14, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Notifications slow to load when new alert comes in

For several weeks (months, always, intermittently, I'm not sure), when a I get a new alert and click on the notifications bell it takes a really long time to load. I get the moving zebra stripes loading pattern for ages. Everything else on Wikimedia sites is snappy.

It takes so long that I open a new tab and guess which project/discussion caused the alert and visit it instead. When I come back, the notifications are loaded. Maybe visiting a new page resets the serving of the notifications?

If I click the bell with no new alerts, it loads fine. I can't really diagnose further as I don't get many alerts. I understand that notices and alerts now get displayed on minerva (I still call them alerts regardless), but this problem predates that.

Chrome/Android/Minerva (but it may happen on Vector 2010 too). Commander Keane (talk) 00:39, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What about when you are on a different network, a different browser or even a different computer ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:34, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I will keep an eye out. Commander Keane (talk) 11:23, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bulk page metadata tool

Is anyone aware of a Toolforge or WMCS tool that, given a list of pages (in my case especially templates), displays a table key metadata about each page (e.g. number of edits, date of creation, number of pages that transclude the page, etc)?

There are tools that can do this for one page at a time, but I'm not aware of any tools that can do it in bulk.

If none exist I'm inclined to write one myself. This, that and the other (talk) 01:35, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Disambiguation links added" false positive?

Hi! Why did this edit get tagged as "Disambiguation links added"? Switching the order of two rows shouldn't have added or edited any links. (Asking this here because it doesn't seem to have been caused by an edit filter.) 2A00:807:D3:B2CD:1D64:EE5:ECA4:CA80 (talk) 10:20, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That seems to be added by an extension, mw:Extension:Disambiguator. This seems like a bug, which can be reported here. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:36, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! That link seems to require an account and I don't currently have time to make one, so someone else would have to report it. 2A00:807:D3:B2CD:1D64:EE5:ECA4:CA80 (talk) 10:40, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect it was a disambiguation link added to a template: the links table for the article was up to date with a previous state of the article; then Special:Diff/1287207784 changed a link from Sarajevo Clock Tower to the dab page Clock Tower; and then, before the job queue had a chance to update the links table for the article, you made your edit, which caused the page to be reparsed and the links table to be updated, and so that update reflected not only your edit but also the changes to links due to the changed template. Anomie ⚔ 11:42, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Problems in Visual Editor (TM:nbnd)

Section moved from Template talk:Non breaking en dash

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

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

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

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

[No action needed, just FYI] MediaWiki internal error

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

MediaWiki internal error.

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

Exception caught inside exception handler.

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

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

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

What triggers the "reverted" tag?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strange interwiki

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

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

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

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

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

Problem with {{Commons category-inline}} template

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

Preview warning: Commons link does not match Wikidata

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

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

Query about a suspicous-looking link

Earlier today I got this diff on my talk page, from a brand-new account that has it as its first and only edit. Now, nothing wrong with that...except the I recommend checking out this Wikipedia page link is to wikiped1a.org (and just that, no page listed). I think I smell a phishing scam? - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 03:46, 27 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Improving the notification UX

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bizarre template failure at Mamluk Sultanate

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

The only significant thing that's happened to the page recently is semi-protection ([1]), but I can't imagine how that would matter. It doesn't seem to be an issue with the code/content (that I can see); when I look at older versions of the article that were definitely displaying properly at the time (e.g. Feb 2025), the problem still shows up. The issue also shows up when I use another browser and another device, including in mobile view, and I don't see it on other pages so far. I tried purging the page, in case that made any difference, but no luck.

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

@R Prazeres: (Partial answer) The page has dropped into Category:Pages where post-expand include size is exceeded and Category:Pages with script errors. Some relevant template must have changed quite recently, since Archive.org has a snapshot of a good version from 26 April. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:24, 27 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MediaWiki internal error

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

MediaWiki internal error.
Original exception: [0d3da270-7b6e-4ed2-a2a8-66bef6751ae3] 2025-04-27 19:42:18: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBUnexpectedError"
Exception caught inside exception handler.
Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true; at the bottom of LocalSettings.php to show detailed debugging information.

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

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

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

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

That's odd

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

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

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

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

Ok, this window (the Reply-window) has a discreet dropdown in the lower right corner (icon seems to be a keyboard). I set that to "Use native keyboard" and that seems to have done the trick. [[ {{ @ is back to normal. Maybe I clicked it without noticing. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 06:38, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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

Converting Commons image to fair use

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

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

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

Redundant class-rating categories

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

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

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

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

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

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

Should be

Fixed following "ugly hack to get around Lua pattters being terrible #125462947". House Blaster (talk • he/they) 19:17, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sub-referencing: User testing

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

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

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

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

Editing the sidebar person template

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

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

Tech News: 2025-18

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

Updates for editors

Event organizers who host collaborative activities on multiple wikis, including Bengali, Japanese, and Korean Wikipedias, will have access to the CampaignEvents extension this week. Also, admins in the Wikipedia where the extension is enabled will automatically be granted the event organizer right soon. They won't have to manually grant themselves the right before they can manage events as requested by a community.
View all 19 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

The release of the next major version of Codex, the design system for Wikimedia, is scheduled for 29 April 2025. Technical editors will have access to the release by the week of 5 May 2025. This update will include a number of breaking changes and minor visual changes. Instructions on handling the breaking and visual changes are documented on this page. Pre-release testing is reported in T386298, with post-release issues tracked in T392379 and T392390.
Users of Wiki Replicas will notice that the database views of ipblocks, ipblocks_ipindex, and ipblocks_compat are now deprecated. Users can query the block and block_target new views that mirror the new tables in the production database instead. The deprecated views will be removed entirely from Wiki Replicas in June, 2025.
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization Newsletter is now available. This edition includes an overview of the improved Content Translation Dashboard Tool, support for new languages, highlights from the Wiki Loves Ramadan campaign, results from the Language Onboarding Experiment, an analysis of topic diversity in articles, and information on upcoming community meetings and events.

Meetings and events

The Let's Connect Learning Clinic will take place on April 29 at 14:30 UTC. This edition will focus on "Understanding and Navigating Conflict in Wikimedia Projects". You can register now to attend.
The 2025 Wikimedia Hackathon, which brings the global technical community together to connect, brainstorm, and hack existing projects, will take place from May 2 to 4th, 2025, at Istanbul, Turkey.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 19:28, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]