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Are you using the (really) old wikitext editor?

Is anyone here using a wikitext editor that gives you a toolbar that looks like this (possibly with a few more buttons):

If you're using this, can you tell me why (e.g., personal preference, a tool that hasn't been ported to the 2010 wikitext editor, just never bothered to switch, anything)? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:02, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Looks like I am, did not know there was a later version of the editor, just the one you get by default. Keith D (talk) 01:44, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

They most don't change your preferences when potentially disruptive new options are introduced. If you go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing and tick the box for "Enable enhanced editing toolbar", then you'll see the 2010 wikitext editor. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:39, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

I use the old wikitext editor but have disabled the toolbars. Except for trivia, my editing is done in a text editor and the clean and simple old wikitext editor allows quick previews. Particularly when working with a module, I might preview stuff in a sandbox twenty of more times to try different things. This comment was written in a text editor. Johnuniq (talk) 06:40, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

I dislike screen clutter and have disabled the upper toolbar. There's another toolbar underneath the edit window which I haven't disabled but hardly use; the option there that I use most often is the one added by User:Anomie/unsignedhelper.js. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:19, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

I use the old one - the JavaScript payload is a lot smaller, and so page loads are noticeably quicker. It also takes up less vertical height, leaving more room for the real purpose of the page - the edit box - to fit into the viewport without scrolling down. I also don't need any of the buttons that it provides. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:43, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

@Redrose64: "I also don't need any of the buttons that it provides." can you clarify to which toolbar 'it' refers here ? It's ambiguous. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:48, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

I already stated "I use the old one" - see Wikipedia:RefToolbar, we have three available, and for me the old one is the only one that we had when I started, i.e. Wikipedia:RefToolbar/1.0; but I also don't need any of the buttons that either of the forms of Wikipedia:RefToolbar/2.0 provide.

I used the term "old" here because Whatamidoing started off by using the phrase "old wikitext editor" in conjunction with an image that shows something very similar to the Wikipedia:RefToolbar/1.0 toolbar as opposed to the 2.0 ones (although mine has several extra buttons, and some differ, so it looks much more like this except that mine doesn't have the button that appears eighth from left in both that image and Whatamidoing's image). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:03, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF):, seems like something that we could also easily measure with event logging is it not ? Or are the usage numbers too low for that ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:48, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Event logging would count how many, but wouldn't give the "why". I'm guessing that this is an attempt to understand the usage rather than just measure it. Anomie⚔ 12:53, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Anomie is correct: I'm trying to figure out why. The toolbar is under-maintained, rarely used (about 1 in 3,000 of the active editors), and it's not clear whether it's worth the resources to prevent death from bitrot. I was assuming that some of those ~50 editors were using it because it was the shiny new thing when they started editing in 2006, and that therefore I had a chance of finding smoe of them here. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:22, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

I normally keep Javascript off - everything works way faster, with less worry about what hacks might be introduced into the site javascript, and also to marginally (because alas occasionally I do allow the script, like this time) reduce concern about what panopticlick techniques (cf. EFF) might be introduced, allegedly to further the endless hopeless war on sock puppets - so I don't see any of that. But when I enable it I see a different but similar bar with extra items for "special characters" and such; I'm not sure which version it is. Wnt (talk) 12:33, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

I probably would still be have the toolbar entirely disabled if it weren't for needing it to toggle CodeEditor between code and plaintext when editing things like Module and JavaScript pages. I never use it except for that. Anomie⚔ 12:53, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Also, BTW, I note that we seem to have bug where, if you've disabled the "enhanced" WikiEditor toolbar in preferences since (probably) September 2016, the default-enabled refToolbar gadget will load it anyway due to JavaScript interpreting "0" as true rather than false like PHP does. I should fix that in MediaWiki, because it's probably affecting more than just refToolbar. Anomie⚔ 12:53, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

@Anomie: See also phab:T54542, I don't think that commit was a particular problem, it's always been a bit of a mess on that front. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:01, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Yuck, no you are right, this is significantly worse now. :( —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:08, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

local fix deployed. But this definitely is not nice. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:24, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

I turned off the toolbar years ago (as all it does for me is allow me to accidentally click on it and reduce the amount of space available for the edit box). So lacking any toolbars, I don't know which editor I am using (other than not VisualEditor). —Kusma (t·c) 12:57, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Um, how do I get my old toolbar back, please? I turned on "Enable enhanced editing toolbar", noted that it now took two rows to display buttons and didn't have my Cite button, and turned it back off. The new toolbar still loads despite a logout, browser restart, etc. Anomie, is this the bug you mentioned? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 13:30, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

@NeilN: should be better now, can you confirm ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:25, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

@TheDJ: Nope. I even turned "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" back on, saved, turned it back off, and saved. The "classic" toolbar appears briefly and then the new toolbar replaces it. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:36, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

You might have to bypass your browser cache. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:54, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Did that. Issue remains. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:45, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Try going to this ApiSandbox link, verify that it looks sensible to you, and click "Make request". That should reset the preference to a better value. Anomie⚔ 16:55, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

@Anomie: That worked. Thank you. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 17:30, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm still using this editor. I did try the new editor when it came out and had some problems with it. It's so long ago, I can't clearly remember what the difficulties were, but some tools/functions were either not available, or took extra clicks or typing to execute. Subsript and superscript might have been in that category, but as I say, I can't fully remember. SpinningSpark 16:06, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

I still technically use this editor, but like others have the toolbar disabled because I don't click any of the buttons (my meta CSS page shows the various clutter I hide). Long as I can continue to disable them with the 2010 editor, it wouldn't bother me to swap over. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 16:36, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

It sounds like most of you (including Johnuniq, John of Reading, Kusma, Wnt, and ^demon) are using the 2003-era wikitext editor.

This is what you get with no Javascript and/or if you disable the toolbars via Special:Preferences. RedRose, have you considered switching to this one, since you don't need any of the buttons? It'd be very slightly faster for you. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:05, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

I still use this, as it's considerably less cluttered than the "official" toolbar so isn't wasting valuable screen space with buttons I'll rarely if ever use, and the few buttons I actually use (super/subscript, hidden text, the RefTools cite button) are right there rather than buried in slow and cumbersome pop-up menus. ‑ Iridescent 17:06, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

+1 --NeilN ^{talk to me} 17:30, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

I use similarly the editor without toolbar as I never use the buttons. In case of non-trivial edits I load the contents of the edit window (via Firefox/It's all text!) into vim, edit it within vim with nice syntax highlighting for MediaWiki markup, and save it back to the edit window. --AFBorchert (talk) 17:37, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

My editor looks very much like the original image; i used to have one with all manner of buttons, bells and, possibly, a whistle, but i went back to this as all the other did was take space for stuff i didn't need. TBH, if i knew a way to get rid of the buttons at the top of this editor i might, as they are almost never of use to me. Happy days, Lindsay^Hello 09:36, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

mw:Editor has the instructions you want (notes on the first item in the table). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:06, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

I should add that the proper way to get custom characters on Windows involves setting some kind of custom keyboard key so that hitting say ` changes the next letter, so you can `a for umlaut a if you want, `- for emdash etc. (There was even a way to make it three keys so you could use ``a for an accent and `:a for an umlaut, etc) But I did that years ago on a laptop that died and forgot how; might be worth giving instructions on it somewhere prominent if anyone remembers how... Wnt (talk) 22:48, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

@Wnt: you're talking about setting up a Compose key. If our article is correct then there is no built-in way to get to get this functionality in Windows (I'm a linux user so can't verify this). Thryduulf (talk) 08:03, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

@Thryduulf: Thanks for the hint - the article led me to Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator, which is very simple to download and still runs on Windows 8.1, at least. I've started editing a new keyboard along the same line (beginning from scratch, with the thought of posting it somewhere under the WMF umbrella). Wnt (talk) 15:57, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): I still use this toolbar - the only button I use on it these days is "cite". I used to occasionally use "table" but not for several years I suspect. If I need to do anything more complicated I either type the wikicode directly or use visual editor. I have no idea whether I've turned it off or never turned it on, but if the former I guess it would have been a performance issue or something several years back. If it's the latter it's because I will never have seen a need to do anything with it - I use almost no scripts or gadgets (hotcat, popups, the insert bar below the editing window and tracking of phab tickets are basically it). Thryduulf (talk) 08:03, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Whatamidoing, I have this toolbar also. I don't use it, and I don't believe I've ever made a practice of using it; I don't remember the last time I intentionally clicked any of the buttons on it. Like Johnuniq, I do significant writing in Notepad; when I need simple code, e.g. <!-- -->, I just type it, and when I need more complex code, I go to a page that uses it and copy/paste the coding. Unlike Wnt and Thryduulf, I type accented characters directly; I know the ALT+ combinations for the extended characters I generally use, and if I don't know it, I'll just find it in Character Map. Nyttend (talk) 22:18, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

This is all still in the rumor phase, but I'm hearing that this old toolbar is probably going away, maybe even this year.

Given that nobody who is using it has professed any love for the 2010 wikitext editor, I think that the reasonable plan is to default to 2003 (the one that has no toolbar at all). If you all think that's a bad idea (substituting no toolbar rather than substituting the newer one, not the going-away part), then please speak up. Thanks, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:40, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

To clarify, you're saying that people currently using the 2006 wikitext editor (pictured at the top of this section) would wind up with the 2003 wikitext editor (i.e. a textarea with no toolbar at all). People using the 2010 Extension:WikiEditor wikitext editor or the 2017 VE-based wikitext editor would not be affected. Is that right? Your first sentence lacks a clear antecedent for "it", at first I read it as referring to the 2010 wikitext editor. Anomie⚔ 12:22, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. (People using any of the other tools, e.g., WikEd, would also not be affected.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:12, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Probably relates to this task: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T30856 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.83.103 (talk) 12:52, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

I use the toolbar and would not expect it to be removed from the editor. It should be retained. Keith D (talk) 13:10, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@KeithD: question, if we move this into a Gadget, and give everyone a single time option to enable that gadget (switchover or not) and then make maintenance of this gadget a responsibility of the community, do you think that something like that would be ok ? Because personally, especially for non-Wikimedia cases, I would really like to take that out of the core of the MediaWiki product. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:08, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind having to re-enable the toolbar through Preferences, if it is moved to a Gadget for maintainability. Diego (talk) 11:05, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

A pity they couldn't figure out how to add a button that tells people exactly what version of the editor they are using. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:29, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Funny case here - I've been using the 2010 for years (I enabled it when it arrived, as I often do to review any new interfaces), but after this conversation I've found that I like the old version better. Nowadays I only use the toolbar for adding the #REDIRECT tag and occasionally including the code for table cells. For these two actions, the old interface has the buttons in plain view, while the 2010 editor has them hidden under the Advanced menu that I have to unfold each time (although it's supposed to be sticky, I often lose its unfolded status when I switch browsers and/or clean cookies). Plus, I prefer the plain #R button that resemble the code to be inserted, rather than the "mystery meat" one with an arrow in the new toolbar, which is hard to parse; and same for the subscript and superscript buttons (x² is way better than A^{small triangle}). So I'm turning off the 2010 version and going back to the old 2006 one. Diego (talk) 10:51, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Sometimes the old editor comes up instead of the new one. Pressing the "preview" button then brings up the new. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:28, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7: I think that's because the oldest one is the default state, newer ones essentially being the old one to which patches are applied with JavaScript. If one of these patches fails to reach your device, or JavaScript fails to complete (or doesn't run at all), you get what is essentially an old version. Although a preview will fix it, any action that causes a page fetch should also work - so you should also be able to fix it simply by using your browser's "reload" facility - in Firefox it's F5. Be warned that by doing this, the edit window can be reset with the consequence that any changes that you made following the partial load may be lost. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:25, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Misplaced alert buttons

Has something changed today with the notification alert buttons? This image depicts the top-right section of my screen when viewed with IE11; I use Monobook, although I doubt that's relevant here. This afternoon (at least as late as 19:45 UTC), everything was fine, but by about 21:00 UTC, this was happening suddenly. The big problem is that the little notification icons are far below the rest of the bar (at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alerts_bar_with_overlaps.png, the icons are at the top of the box in the file history section, between the words "User" and "Comment"), and links above these icons are non-clickable, so most of the page is useless. If you click and drag (as if you're highlighting) starting at any point above the icons, nothing gets highlighted on the left side of the page, and on the right side, the only thing that gets highlighted (even if you're mousing over text that's way far down) is the links appearing in this image.

Technical notes: I'm seeing the same thing at Commons, and I'm not seeing the same thing if I use Firefox. I've not tried it with Chrome, since I don't have that browser. If I log out, everything's fine in IE, but I'm not sure if that's because it's a different skin or because you can't get Notifications when you're logged out. Nyttend (talk) 23:51, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

It looks like you have enabled "Add a clock to the personal toolbar" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. Maybe that fails to push your icons to the left along with the links. Does it help to disable the gadget? PrimeHunter (talk) 00:24, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

No, not useful; I tried it, and that just resulted in the buttons being farther right by a little bit. I've been using the clock gadget for several years without encountering this error before. Nyttend (talk) 00:27, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

I am getting this problem too with IE11; Chrome is all right. To be clear, I have not enabled the clock gadget. Double sharp (talk) 03:01, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

The problem seems to only show up in Monobook: Vector is still all right. The same is true on Russian Wikipedia (which I checked as an example, because I don't speak the language and thus don't edit it much if at all, and so I haven't set Monobook there in my preferences): Monobook gives this problem with the icons, while Vector is all right. Double sharp (talk) 03:50, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Same problem for me. In addition, the notification buttons do appear lower on every page, and wikilinks on each page are inoperative above the point where they appear. That's why I'm logged out to make this edit; because this thread is at the bottom of the page, the "edit" link following its heading is operable for me, but the edit page I get doesn't work, since the window is above the point where the notification buttons appear. I can't change to Vector either, since the tabs on my preferences page are similarly inoperable. 97.91.247.16 (talk) 04:04, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

...<crickets>... Hello, is anyone at all looking into this? I'm pretty much unable to edit from my account until this is fixed, as I currently only have access to IE11. 97.91.247.16 (talk) 06:28, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Yep, all broken in IE, fine in Firefox. Something obviously happened last night that needs to be reverted. Lugnuts ^{Precious bodily fluids} 06:43, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm seeing the problem in Firefox (an old version). Very frustrating. Until it's fixed, perhaps a notice about the problem and the way around it could be put somewhere obvious, like across the top of the watchlist? It took some looking for me to find this discussion, and although I saw the overlapping alert buttons, I didn't think that switching skins would fix both it and the associated problems. I'd already tried changing other settings in my prefs to no avail. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 08:43, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

This needs to be fixed already. I could click the edit button for this section in IE, but I could not place the cursor in the edit window (had to switch to Chrome for this edit). Also, the alert and notification icons weirdly appear below the edit window and the save/preview/changes buttons, to the right of the "This page is a member of X hidden categories". HandsomeFella (talk) 08:42, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Thursday evenings (UTC) you should always expect the unexpected. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:50, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

New MediaWiki versions are installed at the English Wikipedia on Thursdays as Redrose64 hints at. Yesterday it was mw:MediaWiki 1.29/wmf.18. You can probably change skin at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences?useskin=vector#mw-prefsection-rendering. As a temporary bad workaround in MonoBook, try hiding them completely with this in Special:MyPage/monobook.css:

#pt-notifications-alert { display: none; }
#pt-notifications-notice { display: none; }

You can then check them by viewing a page in Vector, for example with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BlankPage?useskin=vector. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:57, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

As further information on this issue, I'm also using IE11 (not by choice; work computer) and monobook.js. In this combination, I find the following issues:

1. Alerts are misplaced as previously described.
2. Many links are unclickable. The closer to the top of the page, the less likely to be clickable. As I move down a page, there comes a point where the links do become clickable.
3. When I try to edit a section, I get the edit box, but it is non-responsive.

These problems only apply to monobook.js, not to the default vector.js skin. As a work around, I'll work in the vector skin for now, but this is clearly a bug that needs to be resolved. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 12:13, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

• Same problem, looks exactly like the example on top. Can't edit, and the code-error won't allow me to change skins under my user name. If it's affecting others posting here then it must be affecting thousands of editors, so...eek? and thanks if this can be cleared up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A000:1112:410A:686E:D7B6:DCFB:E6C0 (talk) 12:53, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

I was able to change skins by using the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences?useskin=vector#mw-prefsection-rendering link provided by PrimeHunter above. Deor (talk) 12:58, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Until it's fixed we could use MediaWiki:Monobook.js to add something like this somewhere: If you have misplaced alert buttons then try Vector. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:36, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Same problem here with IE11. Works fine with Firefox. Ruigeroeland (talk) 15:02, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

A fault with my Wikipedia editing screen when displayed in Firefox

• Long-time editor reporting either an effect or a 'help'. When I came back to my logged-in account after this went into effect I can't edit because the 'alert' and 'notices' icons/buttons have moved way down the page. The coding won't let me click on a link until after my cursor has moved after that point, which precludes editing or linking on anything before the point where the 'alert' and 'message' icons appear. Whatever the cause can anyone suggest a cure? I'd hate to clear my history, which would erase notice of pages already visited here which would compromise project work. Thanks. Will now post this while signing a red-link name to see if the IP appears. Alertmessageiconwtf — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A000:1112:410A:341B:6974:355F:57B8 (talk) 11:11, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

  I'm not sure exactly what the issue is, but I can tell you it's not because of cookie blocks. There is a discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump (technical)#Misplaced alert buttons (permalink). I would follow there for updates, as that as that venue is where technical discussions like this take place. Best — MusikAnimal ^talk 11:33, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

• I use Firefox. When I am in Wikipedia, at the top of the screen on the right are these click links:-
  1. My username, leading to my user page
  2. An image of a bell, leading to my alerts
  3. An image of a computer screen, leading to my notices
  4. The word "talk", leading to my user talk page
  5. The word "sandbox", leading to my user sandbox
  6. (And others)
  • OK so far. But in this display, the graphical clickable for "Your notices" has a much too big catchment area for mouse clicks. As a result, if I click on "talk", I get not my talk page but my notices, unless I click as far to the right as possible, on the rightmost end pixels of the "k" of "talk". This fault has developed in the last few days. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 11:07, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
    • See my message in the section just above, a somewhat similar problem but now can't edit. Alertmessageiconwtf — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A000:1112:410A:341B:6974:355F:57B8 (talk) 11:13, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

I had that problem a few days ago (clicking on talk and getting notices) and it seems to be working properly again for me (clicking on talk again would open my talk page). I use Chrome. —MRD2014 📞 contribs 13:37, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

• • It seems to be working properly again for me now also. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 05:23, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Alerts/notices links are corrupting all pages under IE11

I'm using IE11. As of this morning, all WP pages are corrupted and only partially functional. The row of links at the top of every page (userpage/sandbox/prefs/watchlist et al) function normally, but the alerts/notices links now appear as text (vs. icons) and overlap my talk page link. Furthermore, the alerts/notices icons do appear on every page -- way down below the top row of links (perhaps 30 or more text lines below it). All links below these icons function normally, but all links above them are non-functional (except the top row, as mentioned above). Chrome doesn't exhibit this problem, nor did IE11 as of last night. Lambtron (talk) 15:00, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Probably the same as reported above #Misplaced alert buttons. Nthep (talk) 15:06, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Fixed

The issue should be fixed now. I would appreciate if someone could confirm that it works for them :) Matma Rex talk 19:47, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes. I was experiencing this problem (using IE11) and it's fixed for me now. DH85868993 (talk) 20:05, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Ditto. Nyttend (talk) 22:23, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

OK by me now. 22:28, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for the fix! Double sharp (talk) 05:13, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Problem solved for IE11 -- thanks! Lambtron (talk) 17:46, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Fixed for me also. Thanks. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 04:55, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Canned edit summaries and vandalism

Hi, I just wanted to ask if the web designers can change the mobile website to when you are previewing your edit, change "Example: Fixed typo, added content" to "Explain your changes in your box" or something like that because the canned edit summaries have caused a lot of vandalism, especially un-reverted edits. This new look can reduce canned edit summaries and vandalism. 68.228.254.131 (talk) 20:50, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

If you can link to such examples, that always helps. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:15, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Actually, the canned edit summaries are pretty helpful with spotting vandalism. If I see >5 byte change with a canned edit summary of "fixed typo" then I immediately pull up a diff as the edit is likely to be some form of disruption. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 23:22, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

This, this, or this, has wrong edit summaries, two of them are vandalism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.228.254.131 (talk) 23:19, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

OK... so where you say "canned edit summaries have caused a lot of vandalism", you meant that people use the wrong edit summary if they have nefarious purposes ? I presume you mean that they hide their nefarious purposes behind valid edit summaries, while without canned summaries, they'll likely use the edit summary not at all, or use it for nefarious purposes as well ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:26, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

There's a long-term plan to autogenerate simple edit summaries. I'm hoping that they will decide that "Changed the → the" is one of the easy cases. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:18, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF), why can't you folks in SF ever keep us in the loop with your "long-term plans"? How long are we talking about here, next year or 15 years from now? I thought you couldn't auto-generate edit summaries, because per Jdforrester it would be very poor form, and goes against our user expectation models. – wbm1058 (talk) 11:49, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Math parse problem in PNG-mode with \begin{aligned} and \end{aligned}

See Talk:Acceleration (special relativity)#Parse error, in the article of which I had to replace all instances of the strings \begin{aligned} resp. \end{aligned} with \begin{align} resp. \end{align}.

Is this the right place to bring this up? If not, please advise. Thx. DVdm (talk) 13:54, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Note: there's more articles that seem to suffer from this, for instance History of Lorentz transformations. Will this be fixed globally, or are we going to have to visit and cure all these pages?

I have fixed it and article Hyperbolic motion (relativity).

There's many more.

@D.H: for your information. - DVdm (talk) 14:18, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

There are very few cases of this. This search returns 7 results. --Izno (talk) 14:24, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Oops, hadn't seen you remark, but I think you missed some with that search . By the way, I was't aware that we can use regexes there. NEAT! - DVdm (talk) 14:29, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Well, that's concerning that the one generates 7 and the other 8k (though yours certainly has false positives--there are still more in your results than in mine). --Izno (talk) 14:45, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

I clicked on one at random--Semi-implicit Euler method does not contain the string in question. Regardless, this seems like it could be a trivial bot/AWB request to have fixed. Hop over to WP:Bot requests. --Izno (talk) 14:48, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Bot requested: [1]. - DVdm (talk) 16:10, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

@Izno: I manually corrected the 7 articles. The other hits seem unrelated, with the "aligned" string not within source math constructs, just in translated math results.

It looks like <math>\begin{align}... gets translated to {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}...}}, whereas <math>\begin{aligned}... causes an error.

Searches for insource:/\<math\>.*\\(end|begin)\{aligned\}/ and insource:/\<math\>.*\\(end|begin)\{align\}/ would have been more relevant. - DVdm (talk) 07:27, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Sharedupload-desc-here

In late 2011 it was suggested (by user jonkerz) unlinking the Commons logo (File:Commons-logo.svg) in MediaWiki:Sharedupload-desc-here or making the link point to the actual file on Commons like it is in pt:MediaWiki:Sharedupload-desc-here. In many other major/important Wikipedias that logo is either unlinked or link points to the corespondent Commons file page. Hereby I've opened this thread to decide together what to do. XXN, 20:59, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Working with files in several Wikipedias, jumping from on wiki to another and trying to access file pages from articles, sometimes I've encountered a problem here clicking quickly on that logo to access the specific file page of the viewed file on Commons, but in result I just opened one more time the page File:Commons-logo.svg:( That's why personally I prefer to see that link pointing to the corespondent Commons file page of the viewed file, or at least to see it unlinked. XXN, 20:59, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

I didn't even notice this...but now that I do, it seems really silly. Support delinking it. – Train2104 (t • c) 19:41, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Moved to VPR as this is a proposal – Train2104 (t • c) 05:53, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Panoramic viewer?

Does Wikipedia currently yet support any panoramic viewers for 360 degree (or less) panoramic images/movies? Thanks. SharkD  Talk  02:23, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

No, and I doubt that it's going to turn up in the annual plan for next year. But I keep hoping, because there's a Commons contributor who has made some awesome images in that format. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:23, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

For anyone willing to work on this, it wouldn't be terribly hard. It's basically just moving the pannellum JS library into a MediaWiki extension, making sure that the thumbnail renderer outputs some sort of hook for the library to detect and adding the RL modules. It's a couple of days work but you need to have the days.. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:20, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

I have been using Pannellum on my website too. It works pretty well IMO. Performance seems better than Panosalado. SharkD  Talk  23:56, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Collapsing part of an infobox based on the number of rows of data

Help from parser function expert needed. There is an infobox I'm trying to develop {{UK railway station usage/sandbox}} that every year should get a new line of data added with the data for that year. Is there a way to specify within the infobox coding to display only the most recent three rows and collapse any additional rows into a labelled section (and omit that section if the total number of rows is two or less)? I don't want to specify that the three rows displayed are, for example, 2016, 2015 and 2014 but to take the three most recent rows for which data exists even if it ends up displaying 2015, 2013 and 2012 because 2016 and 2014 aren't recorded. I'd hope that this also makes the infobox dynamic and doesn't require huge amounts of recoding when 2017 gets added. Nthep (talk) 21:55, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

I have thought about this (for another language and use-case, but from technical POV it is the same). IMO, parser functions isn't the best solution (it will be very hacky). I would suggest Lua, which may be relatevily simple. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 16:21, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for that, after investigation that was where I was thinking things will end up. Nthep (talk) 18:40, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Noticed this question at help desk

Wikipedia:Help desk#Unable to log in on mobile (Safari).

Looks like a technical question. They could probably use your advice. The Transhumanist 05:19, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

SVG not rendering at particular thumb size

For some reason the image File:Underground.svg (shown right) isn't rendering when resized to 70px, but it's fine at all other sizes. Clicking through to the generated thumbnail image Firefox tells me that "The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because it uses an invalid or unsupported form of compression." I've resized it to 72px in Template:London Underground sidebar so that it's visible again, but is this a known bug? Was the 70px thumbnail corrupted when being generated recently? (The svg file itself hasn't been touched for three years.) --McGeddon (talk) 09:00, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for reporting this. The image embedded displays correctly for me. This might be yet another instance of phab:T162035. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 09:48, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

What is this sidebar?

In the last day or two I have seen this sidebar gadget or whatever it is appear on the right hand side of certain pages.I think only articles, but not all of them? I've not made any recent changes to my preferences so I'm somewhat mystified as to what this is and why I'm sometimes seeing it. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:55, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

It's the page curation bar. It appears and disappears for me as well. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:22, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

It appears if you visit certain special pages (such as Special:NewPagesFeed), even if you get there by accident and exit immediately; and it's a swine to get rid of again. According to Wikipedia:Page Curation/Help#Curation Toolbar, there's supposed to be a little "x" icon at the top, which will close it; but none is visible in your screenshot. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:35, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

• The very first "button" on that bar is "minimize", after minimizing you should see the "x" to close it. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:39, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

  The icon that looks like a right-pointing arrow against a vertical bar? Doesn't suggest "minimise" to me, it's more of a "next page" thing. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:52, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

  There are only seven icons and it has mouseover "Minimize". If you click it then the only options are "x" with mouseover "Close", and "Curation" to show the bar again. If it works then it shouldn't be hard to figure out. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:47, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Huh, I did look at the new pages feed a few days ago while trying to sort something out, I had no idea that just looking at a page could activate an editng gadget. I'll see if I can't turn it off next time it pops up. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:10, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Sister projects search results

Hello,

In September of last year the Discovery Search team reached out to this community to discuss early work on showing other Wikimedia projects in the search results. The team will soon be ready to put final code updates on the most recent A/B test and make this change happen in production. This update will only add search result snippets from the Wikimedia sister projects in a sidebar to be displayed on the search results page. The release date is expected to be near the end of April 2017 on all Wikipedias.

Further testing is described at Cross-wiki Search Result Improvements/Testing.

If you want to test these results in advance, directions for self-guided testing are available. Additional information on this work can be found at Cross-wiki Search Result Improvements. We are excited to bring what is one of the more substantial changes to search to Wikipedia and appreciate your feedback.

Thank you, CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 22:02, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Is there a way that a wiki can decide which sisterprojects they want or don't want to display? E.g. I can imagine people objecting to the too commercial aspect of Wikivoiyage, or the risk of copyright violations from wikisource, or unwanted images from Commons, or... For example, on one of the example images the WMF presents, when people look for rainbows, they get a Wikivoyage snippet about Camping Rainbows in Egestorf[2]. That seems to me to be highly unwanted behaviour. The risk for e.g. BLP violations from Wikinews also seems considerable. In general, looking at the provided examples, the added value from Wikibooks, Wikivoyage, Wikinews, Wikiversity and Wikiquote seems minimal. Commons and Wiktionary are much better candidates for this. Fram (talk) 12:10, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

ListeriaBot adding non-free images to Wikipedia namespace page

Does anyone know why User:ListeriaBot keeps adding non-free images to Wikipedia:Tambayan Philippines/Task force LGU/Provinces in Wikidata with this edit? I've asked about this at User talk:ListeriaBot#Adding non-free images, but not sure how active that page is. The three files being continuously added are licensed as non-free, although one of them is shadowing a Commons file of the same name. From the bot's talk page, it appears to have been the subject of other discussions on VP/T before. Maybe it's something with the files themselves, but they should be used outside the article namespace per WP:NFCC#9. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:11, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

It is operated by user:Magnus Manske. Given that the images are those named on Wikidata, it may expect it is adding a commons image. So the bot should be reprogrammed to check that the added image is actually the one from commons. It the talk is ignored,then we can block the bot without further warning, as bot operators must be responsive. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:23, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

These files are local ones which shadow ones on Commons. There appears to be a licensing conflict - Commons has a {{PD-PhilippinesGov}} which says that works produced by officers/employees of the Philippine government are in the public domain, while we have a {{Non-free Philippines government}} which says that the work is a product of the Government of the Philippines which does not permit commercial use, making it non-free. I have no idea which one is correct. – Train2104 (t • c) 02:44, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

@Train2104: Per c:COM:CRT#The Philippines the clause for prior approval is determined to be a non-copyright restriction and can be safely ignored for the purposes of Wikimedia Commons by policy. Therefore works of the Philippine Government is considered to be under the Public Domain. Generally, Commons should always be given deference when it comes to copyright templates over local enwiki templates. Their policies are kept up to date far better than our ever will be. --Majora (talk) 03:28, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

This TfD was closed as no consensus. A discussion should be started elsewhere to standardize the two. – Train2104 (t • c) 03:34, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

It was closed that way because TfD is not the place to have a drawn out discussion on the merits of non-copyright restrictions. Rightly so in my opinion as TfD was never designed for that purpose. In my opinion, the 929 transclusions of {{Non-free Philippines government}} probably have to be gone through. The copyright template needs to be replaced with the proper one (again, giving deference to Commons on matters of copyright), and the files need to be moved to Commons and deleted off of enwiki.

As for the actual original purpose of this thread. @Marchjuly and Graeme Bartlett: it doesn't looks like these photos are actually fair use but are considered free. There doesn't seem to be a need to block the bot at this time. --Majora (talk) 03:44, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

The TfD listed above is over a year old; we can try again. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:04, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

The files being added are licensed as non-free. If that's incorrect, then maybe they should be re-licensed. Moreover, if the other two are also shadowing Commons files, then maybe all three should be speedied per WP:F8 if applicable. Just for reference, the diffrences between Commons and Wikipedia on the licensing of Philippine governments files was discussed at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content/Archive 64#Philippine government works back iat the end of 2015, but that was archived without anything being resolved. There is the much older discussion at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content/Archive 14#Template:Philippines-politician from 2006. -- Marchjuly (talk) 04:37, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

@Graeme Bartlett: The bot has re-added File:Ph seal bataan.png, File:Ph seal biliran.png and File:Ph seal camiguin.png and will probably keep re-adding them each time they are removed. While it's true c:File:Ph seal camiguin.png, c:File:Ph seal bataan.png and c:File:Ph seal biliran.png exist on Commons, no information at all is provided about them and they appeared to have been transferred to Commons from ceb.Wikipedia. If the Commons files are fine, then the local versions on not needed here; moreover, leaving them as is will only confuse things and mistakenly lead others to use them incorrectly. If the file names weren't the same, I could just replace the local files per NFCC#1 with the PD ones and let the locals be deleted as orphans. Because the names are the same, however, there is a chance someone will simply re-add the files in good faith so that they are not orphans. Do you think it would be OK to tag the locals with {{db-f8}}? Please note that although the file formats are the same for all files in looks to me that the quality of at least two of the local files is better than their Commons versions. -- Marchjuly (talk) 01:20, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

I deleted File:Ph seal biliran.png as it was identical to one on Commons. Other two files are not identical to those on Commons and the difference is not only in size. I do not know which of them are better. They can be uploaded to Commons under different names and deleted from enwiki. Ruslik_Zero 20:04, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Ok, I moved the remaining files to Commons: c:File:Ph seal camiguin2.png and c:File:Ph seal bataan2.png, updated file links and deleted them from enwiki. Ruslik_Zero 20:30, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Thank Ruslik0 for taking a look and figuring out how to resolve this. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:47, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

API query to determine page protections

I need to determine the edit/move protections on a page via the API (e.g., office, full, semi, pending-changes, etc).

It is not easy to do via category memberships. For example, although there is a top-level "Category:Wikipedia semi-protected pages", beneath that there is also a "Category:Wikipedia_indefinitely_semi-protected_pages" and many other variations. When recursing through to find sub-categories, you quickly encounter sub-categories that contain pages that aren't under protection, and a greater depth, almost listing every category on the encyclopedia.

I haven't been able to find an efficient way to do this on a per-page basis. Could I download the entire list of protected pages from the "Special:" function? Probably, but that seems like overkill for a quick task. West.andrew.g (talk) 02:21, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

mw:API:Info#inprop=protection. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:44, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, the API is probably the best route. Membership of categories like Category:Wikipedia semi-protected pages does not necessarily mean that all the pages in that category are semi-protected, nor that all semi-protected pages are in that category. The category is merely a reflection of the templates on the page such as {{pp-semi}}. For example, User:Redrose64/Sandbox12 is semi-protected until 09:28, 7 May 2017 (UTC), but is not in any "protected pages" cats. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:30, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Abandoned rater gadget

User:Kephir/gadgets/rater is a useful (and popular?) tool for quickly adding WikiProject ratings from an article's page, but it has been abandoned for some time now (with a number of suggestions on its talk page). Would anyone be interested in adopting it? czar 00:55, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

External links

Hi! Please see my messages on talk pages this and this.

Actually the matter is that I have seen some English film wiki-pages, which have some links repeated two times; one under #Reference section and other under #External_links section. Why a link has been provided two times in one page? I think a template ({{Extref}}) should be made to resolve this, which can be put in between the article as reference and those can be listed only under #External_links section. This will remove the repetation of a single link in a single article. I have discussed this matter with Admin:Cyphoidbomb, and he suggested me to ask it here.

Also I had a conversation with TropicAces, and the user accepted this matter here. But the problem there is the links have gone under notelist and might disturb other notes on that page. Please help, Thanks! M. Billoo 04:07, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Ugh. Having some references in the references section and some more under a "notes" section that's misplaced underneath the external links? No thanks. Anomie⚔ 13:27, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

It's against MOS. See WP:LAYOUTEL "nor should links used as references normally be duplicated in this section". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:00, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

code editor?

Is it just me of has the code editor been removed? It used to be that when editing Lua or JavaScript files, the editor changed to support the use of tabs, syntax coloring, regex search and replace. I have changed none of the settings at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing. I will miss that stuff if the code editor has been permanently removed.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:21, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: It still loads for me. Maybe your internet connection speed is preventing it from loading, or something in your CSS/JS pages is messing with it. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 11:03, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Those reasons would be surprising. No recent changes to User:Trappist_the_monk/common.js nor User:Trappist_the_monk/common.css; internet connection speed is plenty fast. We just had Thursday which may be a clue. I noticed this first yesterday(Friday) while editing sco:Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation – at the time, I suspected that sco.wiki didn't have the code editor installed. But, now that for me it isn't working at en.wiki, and we just had Thursday, I wonder if mwf hasn't done something to break the code editor.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:24, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

On code pages I have a <> icon at the top left of the edit box to switch between code and source editor. And in the source editor I can also click "Advanced" above the edit box to get a search and replace icon with regex to the far right. The interface is different from the code editor. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:10, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

That's the fix. Thanks.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:04, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Find/replace parameters in the edit URL

How do the amfind and amreplace parameters in the edit summary work? In the infobox at Downtown (Petula Clark song)#Downtown .2788 there is a link for deprodding, which I wrote to contain the parameters amfind={%7Bproposed%20deletion%2Fdated%20files.*%7D%7D%0A*.*>&amreplace=%20 based on what I saw in old versions {{prod blp/dated}} before I converted it. However, when I click on the link, the prod template is still in the edit box. – Train2104 (t • c) 18:58, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

It would require user JavaScript to do anything with the url parameters. I found some old scripts at User:Jnothman/automod.js and User:Henrik/js/automod.js. A userspace search on automod finds more. I don't know whether they work and have significant use. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:00, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

In that case, we should probably remove it from widely visible maintenance templates... – Train2104 (t • c) 21:01, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

I see you did that. Let's see if users with such scripts object. xkcd: Workflow is sometimes quoted here. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:24, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Well, I'd rather that they object than someone without the script click "deprod" and save the page, not knowing they didn't actually deprod. And userscripts shouldn't be advertised on article space maintenance tags. – Train2104 (t • c) 00:55, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Question

This is an extremely odd question, and has far less to do with technical aspects of Wikipedia than it does with my own browser, but I just wanted to know if anybody else has encountered this and/or knows how to fix it. The situation is that frequently, when I'm typing a block of text that's longer than just a few lines, at some point in the text Google Chrome seems to have a weird predilection for self-inserting a hard line break when my text has wrapped to a new line in edit mode, causing my text to suddenly

do this. (In this instance I did it intentionally to show what I'm talking about. Normally, however, this happens without me doing anything to make it happen.)

And when that happens, it's a complete pain in the ass to correct it, typically requiring several repetitions of backspace backspace retype didn't work backspace backspace retype again before it actually corrects the formatting. So is this just happening to me, or have other people been having the same problem? Bearcat (talk) 20:56, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Personalized CSS to hide certain types of divs

Once again I come to en-wiki for technical advice since my home-wiki is fairly small.

Would it be possible to have a piece of personalized CSS that hides certain types of divs? Let's say I have defined a div in MediaWiki:Common.css called "Foo" and I want to enter some code in User:InsaneHacker/common.css that makes any content within a "Foo"-div not show up when I load a page? Respectfully, InsaneHacker (💬) 16:41, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

You seem to have at least one misconception about CSS: Let's say I have defined a div in MediaWiki:Common.css called "Foo" is not how CSS works (at least with respect to the question you're asking--the "cascading" part of CSS is important to remember for later). CSS works by targeting some part of the HTML of a page, not the CSS of another stylesheet (which is what Common.css is). So you can hide certain kinds of divs just by knowing the structure of the HTML in the pages which you are trying to affect. It would help us help you if you gave us the exact kinds of divs you would like to hide. --Izno (talk) 17:32, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

I have limited css knowledge but I guess you refer to code similar to this in da:MediaWiki:Common.css:

 div.NavContent {
        font-size: 100%;
        background-color: #fafafa;
        padding: 2px;
 }

It doesn't "define" NavContent but gives css rules for divs with the class NavContent. The class is assigned in wikitext or by the MediaWiki software. You should be able to override or supplement the css rules in personal css by replacing the part in { ... } with your own css, for example like this to hide it:

 div.NavContent {
        display: none;
 }

PrimeHunter (talk) 17:52, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Yep, should work. I'm using such CSS to prevent some text from being shown that's not useful to me, like the copyright warning before the save button. Regards SoWhy 17:56, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter and SoWhy:Thanks, exactly what I needed. Respectfully, InsaneHacker (💬) 18:36, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Can't start WP:GLOO

Hi. I have been trying to install Igloo, by pasting the code into my common.js file and vector.js file. I then cleared my cache, but it did not help. Can you please help me? Cheers, FriyMan ^talk 07:27, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

It says to install with importScript('Wikipedia:Igloo/gloo.js'); which you did correctly. Wikipedia:Igloo/gloo.js says mw.loader.load("//tools.wmflabs.org/igloo/code/Igloo/gloo.js");. But I get a 503 Service Unavailable error message at http://tools.wmflabs.org/igloo/code/Igloo/gloo.js. See List of HTTP status codes#5xx Server error. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:05, 10 April 2017 (UTC)