Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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Add new category: articles in mainspace that contain template "Draft article"

{{AfC submission}} uses Module:AfC submission catcheck so it can list AfC submissions with categories automatically in Category:AfC submissions with categories.

It looks like {{Draft article}} also uses Module:AfC submission catcheck but it does not appear to be listing articles in mainspace that contain {{Draft article}} in a category. Can we do that? I have asked @Tol: to add removing {{Draft article}} from articles in mainspace to TolBots list of tasks. It would be nice if the bot could work from a category, just like the existing task to remove {{Draft categories}} from mainspace articles.

Note that there are currently no articles in mainspace that contain {{Draft article}} but that is because I used AWB to remove it. Thank you, Polygnotus (talk) 06:33, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Polygnotus You're basically asking for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere?target=Template%3ADraft+article&namespace=0&hidelinks=1&hideredirs=1&limit=50. It's been a while since I've used the desktop AWB, but in WP:JWB it's pretty easy to generate a list of mainspace pages that transclude a template. You can import the JSON file below to do it for {{Draft article}}:

{
	"Draft article template in mainspace": {"string":{"namespacelist":["0"],"linksto-title":"Template:Draft article"},"bool":{"linksto":true,"backlinks":false,"embeddedin":true,"imageusage":false},"replaces":[]}
}

TolBot should be able to do something similar. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:21, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That would also be a way to achieve the same goal, but that would be inconsistent, less elegant, and a waste of dev time. AWB and JWB are intended for tasks that require human supervision, which this does not. Polygnotus (talk) 15:56, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Polygnotus PyWikiBot, or whatever TolBot is using on the backend, should be able to perform a similar search. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:28, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Ahecht: I know how Pywikibot and the Action API work. You have not given a reason why you prefer that approach. Polygnotus (talk) 10:22, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Module editor needed, again

Another two redlinks generated by the move of template-generated maintenance categories again, this time relating to {{Infobox road}}:

But yet again, the template isn't directly declaring these categories itself in any place I could fix them myself, but is smuggling them in via a module I can't edit, so I need somebody with module-editing privileges to clean them up. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 17:20, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is beyond me, too. And I tested and it doesn't follow redirects. Posted at Template talk:Infobox road in the hope that one of the editors watching that knows how this works. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:30, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think exceptions to ISO names need to be added at Template:Infobox road/meta/mask/category. — Jts1882 | talk 18:10, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, it is safer than adding it to the ISO, less templates using the subtemplate than the module. Snævar (talk) 20:19, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've made this edit and it seems to make the change. One road that I null edited is there at the moment. — Jts1882 | talk 08:04, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The trace here is Template:Infobox_road > Template:Infobox road/meta/mask/category > Template:Country name > Module:ISO 3166 > Module:ISO 3166/data/National. The last module "Module:ISO 3166/data/National" mentions "Cabo Verde" as the main name and "Cape Verde" as the alterntive, hence the category gets thee "Cabo Verde" name. Snævar (talk) 19:40, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, gang. I followed up Jts's Cape Verde edit above with another one that used the same format to deal with the Georgia category, and that also worked, so that one's now clean as well. Thanks again for figuring this out. Bearcat (talk) 15:35, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

File:01 Burqa (cropped).tif

When I hover over the "reply" link on WP:VP/P policy I see File:01 Burqa (cropped).tif. Any particular reason for that? CambridgeBayWeather (solidly non-human), Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 23:00, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure which "reply" link you're hovering over (there are far too many to try all of them), but neither hovering nor clicking yielded the file in question for the two I tried. – Daℤyzzos (✉️ • 📤) _{Please do not ping on reply.} 23:29, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's all the reply links. Only hovering shows the image and click on the reply link just opens the page to reply. CambridgeBayWeather (solidly non-human), Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 04:54, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@CambridgeBayWeather: I guess you have enabled "Navigation popups" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. The reply links are made by "Enable quick replying" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing. The links points to the page itself and File:01 Burqa (cropped).tif is displayed in Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Can we hide sensitive graphic photos? Popups can display an image outside the lead, unlike the default feature Page previews at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:36, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I do have the navigation popup enabled. It just seemed an odd choice of image for the VP/P page as I didn't realise that was the only image on the page. I see that File:718smiley.svg is showing at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). CambridgeBayWeather (solidly non-human), Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 05:00, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe the icons at Wikipedia:Village pump should also be added to the top of the pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:12, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's not really a good place to add only the relevant icon, and hovering over a link to WP:VP (no particular section) yields no image, despite the WP:VP/P one being in the header, so I'm not quite sure where at all one would put a relevant image. – Daℤyzzos (✉️ • 📤) 15:42, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Popups looks at the source text in Wikipedia:Village pump and doesn't discover the icons which are transcluded from {{Village pump}}. Hovering on the template link shows the first icon File:Edit-find-replace.svg. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:15, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. Still doesn't solve the question of where one would put the WP:VP icons. – Daℤyzzos (✉️ • 📤) Please do not ping on reply. 22:52, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Huh. I thought that at the top might work because when I hover over my talk page link above I see File:ANEWSicon.png and on my user page, File:CambridgeBayWeather logo.svg. On PrimeHunter's I see a barnstar and his talk page link shows File:Information.svg. But for some reason hovering over the links to Daℤyzzos and his talk page show no images at all. CambridgeBayWeather (solidly non-human), Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 00:18, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, hovering over a link to your talk page displays File:Wikipedia Administrator.svg, but that's still provided (albeit smaller than File:ANEWSicon.png) by the Adminidstrators' newsletter. – Daℤyzzos (✉️ • 📤) 18:35, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And that's what I'm seeing now. CambridgeBayWeather (solidly non-human), Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 18:39, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I did some testing and I found... (drumroll please)
...that I have absolutely no idea why my talk page (or normal userpage for that matter) gets no image! But at least we know now that it can't be something to do with the image or its syntax

.

— Daℤyzzos (✉️ • 📤) Please do not ping on reply. 19:19, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another mystery

When I go to the talk page for a Wiki article entitled "Ramendra Kumar" and click on History, sometimes I see the entire history as I'd expect, with all messages in descending order ... other times I see selected revisions (there's a box saying "Compare selected revisions," so I'm calling what I see that same way). I never know what to expect when I click on History. I assume this would happen at other article Talk pages.

Of course I want to see the entire history. Please help me stop the selected revisions from coming up when I click on History. Augnablik (talk) 12:43, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Augnablik, what is the URL, in both cases? — Qwerfjkl talk 13:38, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramendra_Kumar, @Qwerfjkl. But now I see the history as it should look. I've noticed this has happened before with that history ... but now I've discovered this is happening with other histories as well. One day, I see selected revisions — another day, everything.

I checked several more edits that I made to other articles and the History tab is bringing up all the revisions correctly. Let me check on this again tomorrow and see if it goes back to seeing just selected revisions. Stay tuned, please.

I'm intrigued by your User name, as it's certainly an interesting version of the Qwerty keyboard! Augnablik (talk) 15:36, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Augnablik, I mean the URL when you only see certain versions, not the URL of the page.
As far as I know there is no Qwerfjkl keyboard; I just started on Qwerty and got bored halfway through. — Qwerfjkl talk 15:56, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, sorry, that’s what I thought I’d copied for you. It’s https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ramendra_Kumar&action=history .

But again, I’ve now found that the selected version/entire version changes happen elsewhere as well as at that page. And by the way when I just checked at the RK page, I found the edits were now showing in their entirety. So, then, they changed twice in one day.

As for your Wiki name, lyes, I know there’s no keyboard that uses it. I was just having a little fun with you, Augnablik (talk) 18:26, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yet another mystery

When I add topics in places like the article Talk pages and the Help Desk, perhaps elsewhere too, I'm finding a lot of times that square-shaped "sticky notes" have begun to pop up with brief dictionary definitions of words. No idea why. I don't ask for them, they just seem to come on their own. They get in the way of my typing. Is there a way to stop this? Augnablik (talk) 12:46, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Do the "sticky notes" look something like this?

note

A brief record of facts, topics, or thoughts, written down as an aid to memory.

More »

— Daℤyzzos (✉️ • 📤) 15:59, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, except mine are square.

By the way, @DaZyzzogetonsGotDaLastWord, please tell me how you inserted that image. That's exactly what I wanted to do in this message but didn't know how. Augnablik (talk) 16:22, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. If the "sticky notes" look like that, you probably have some sort of dictionary extension installed. If you're using Google Chrome, check here to see if you have that installed. If you're not using Google Chrome, I doubt I can help any further.

I made the diagram using the {{box}} template—it's not an image. Documentation for using the {{box}} template can be found here. Information on uploading a screenshot (image) of Wikipedia to show your problem can be found here.

— Daℤyzzos (✉️ • 📤) Please do not ping on reply 18:53, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

1- I am using Chrome. :) I followed your link and ended up on a page entitled Google Dictionary, so I suppose that means the dictionary is installed. Now what?

2- A box template, interesting. I look forward to learning about this. Augnablik (talk) 08:14, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Augnablik: Everybody sees a page called Google Dictionary at [1]. The question is whether you see a button to add or remove the extension. It may be another extension. See https://support.google.com/chrome_webstore/answer/2664769#uninstall-extension. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:15, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@PrimeHunter, I see an Add button. Augnablik (talk) 12:17, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Augnablik: Then look for another installed extension as described at my link. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:27, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I did what you asked, looking for another installed extension. Two came up. One was clearly an extension, and it didn't look important, so I deleted it. But the second is Acrobat! I can't imagine why that would appear as an extension. As you can guess, I didn't uninstall it.

Perhaps for the uninstallation to work, or the sticky notes to stop (if that's supposed to happen now), I'll restart my computer and come back to see what happens. Augnablik (talk) 15:09, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Christmas message error

Urgh I just sent out a load of Christmas messages and forgot to add a </div> at the end. So responses will spew onto the background. Can somebody use AWB or a bot to quickly fix it and add it like this, it would take an hour to do manually! ♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:29, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some have been fixed already. Each one will require checking manually. @Dr. Blofeld: What is the original that you used? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:35, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Blowers, you are guilty of having too many wiki-friends! Looks like RedRose64 is very kindly helping you out. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:47, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A number of them are contributors to the challenges who deserve to be shown that they are appreciated Martin! ♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:58, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The only challenge I generally ever attempt is this one, and the results aren't usually very impressive. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:25, 15 December 2024 (UTC) [reply]

Redrose64, or use AWB to alert them to add </div> at the end if they've not already fixed it! ♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:52, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That would be spamming. But what is the original that you used? Presumably it was a template; if I can fix the problem at source, it shouldn't occur again. It seems that every year, somebody sends out Christmas greetings with unclosed markup of some kind - in this case there were both a missing ''''' and a missing </div> but in the past I've seen cases of unclosed tables, or where closing tags are transposed. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:59, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please let me know if I can help with this. I have a bot task approved for fixing typos and issues in mass messages. – DreamRimmer (talk) 13:21, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is it possible something could be coded to fix the ones Redrose hasn't done yet? It's just it'll take over an hour to fix manually. Perhaps if this is a common problem at Christmas something could be coded to fix them? Only if it wouldn't take long to do Dream. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:56, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I can fix it. It is bedtime here where I live, so I will take care of it tomorrow. – DreamRimmer (talk) 17:14, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

All

Done now, including fixing up some half-fixes by others - do people really think that </div style> is valid?. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:59, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

URGENT - more category template mess

A mass nomination has been listed at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working for processing with hundreds and categories and hundreds of thousands of articles. However these are generated by convoluted code in templates and it's not clear how to change WikiProject & taskforce "articles" to "pages" without causing chaos.

Can some please URGENTLY look at the templates and sort this out. Once again we've had a mass renaming pushed through without stopping to check it can be easily done. Timrollpickering (talk) 00:04, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Module talk:WikiProject banner has some discussion about the topic. Izno (talk) 00:12, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I see at the top of Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working#Bot work it states If the category needs to be split among multiple destination categories, requires template editing, or requires editing the documentation subpage of templates, or any other special circumstances that require manual review, list it at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working/Manual rather than here. Perhaps that should be done, and the person who didn't do that in the first place informed of their mistake? Anomie ⚔ 00:14, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've moved the list to Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working/Large and will try blocking the bot for a couple of hours to see if that resets it. I have asked the editor who put the list on the main processing page to remember to fix templates at the same time. But more generally this whole renaming mess has caused chaos, not least because of the absurdly complicated way these categories are generated without being easy to amend. Timrollpickering (talk) 00:22, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox radio station issues

In many articles at Category:CS1 errors: URL regarding radio stations have a common problem and its about a citation error that too in same place. It's something with {{Infobox radio station}}.––kemel49^{(connect)(contri)} 17:38, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not a WP:VPT issue.

I only looked at one article (WALC) but in that article there is this:

| facility_id = WALC: 72377 <br />WZLC: 173901

The value assigned to that parameter completes an incomplete url.

If one is to believe the template documentation, the only value that should be assigned to that parameter is the 'numeric Facility ID' – whatever that is. As currently written, the value assigned to |facility_id= looks like a mishmash of callsigns and facility IDs for two different radio stations. Perhaps the other radio station articles in Category:CS1 errors: URL suffer from similarly malformed input.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:16, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is it appropriate to remove WALC: & <br /> and only put one line of numerical rather than two.––kemel49^{(connect)(contri)} 18:22, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You should probably discuss this issue with editors at Wikipedia:WikiProject Radio Stations. Editors there should be able to tell you how to properly handle two (related) radio stations in a single article/infobox. Perhaps that discussion will result in changes to {{Infobox radio station}}.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:56, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Account creation limit for administrators

I'm trying to process WP:ACC requests and I'm getting the message that I've exceeded the "6 accounts in the last 24 hours" limit (when I tried it via the API, I got "acct_creation_throttle_hit") despite the fact that I am an administrator have the noratelimit userright. Reading WP:Account creator and WP:Event coordinator it seems like admins shouldn't be subject to that limit. I've verified via the API that I am properly logged in and have noratelimit. Any idea why I'm not able to create further accounts? --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:14, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Special:ListGroupRights#sysop confirms you should have noratelimit. You have created 9 accounts today.[2] wgAccountCreationThrottle is set to 6 in https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php. If the problem started after the 9th then I really don't know why. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:55, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@PrimeHunter Some were created directly with the ACC tool, so they may appear to come from a toolforge IP address as opposed to my own, and others were created manually. At least that's all I can think of. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:11, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@PrimeHunter I just tried creating some other accounts both manually and via the tool and they both worked, but the specific username I tried before still gives me the "6 accounts" error. Does that rate limit follow the username somehow? --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:18, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:35, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You could be hitting a special upstream mitigation, is there anything unusual about the username you are trying to create? — xaosflux ^Talk 22:16, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Might've been the email domain, which appears to be on various lists as "likely used for abuse and fraud". --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:20, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Could be - I don't normally create accounts for people with suspicious email addresses. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:04, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How are you authenticating to the API? If you're using a bot password or an OAuth client it's possible that the client does not have a grant that includes noratelimit. Taavi (talk!) 15:14, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I was using Special:ApiSandbox, so no bot password or OAuth (and the same issue occurred with the regular account creation page as well). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:22, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Highlight function of Interactive Pathways Map not displaying content correctly

when you try to use the function Highlight as in

GlycolysisGluconeogenesis_WP534|highlight=Glucose-6-phosphate_isomerase

the thumbimage is not displayed correctly: it is centered on the highlighted objcet as intended but not displayed, leaving a void where the highlighted object should be.

div style="position: relative; top: -204.445378151261px; left: -239.5px; width: {{{bSize}}}px" the problem is in width:{{{bSize}}}. it should be fit-content

the problem affects every interactive pathways map i have seen. A.garofalo32 (talk) 20:37, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The highlight box when clicking on a notification linking to this post is also way oversized: it extends just past the bottom of the text in the previous post an well below the bottom of the footer. (Wait—is this reply also going to be way off to the side? Only one way to find out!) – Daℤyzzos (✉️ • 📤) Please do not ping on reply. 20:49, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-51

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MediaWiki message delivery 22:21, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Seeking bot that checks for duplicate sources

Is there any bot on Wikipedia that will check an article for sources that are used multiple times (and could be combined)? ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 22:26, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is a tool available at https://yabbr.toolforge.org/ that helps combine duplicate references. – DreamRimmer (talk) 02:12, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like that's a different function. It finds articles where someone has twice named a citation using the same refname. I'm looking for something which finds duplicate URLs, so that I can combine them into one [named] citation that can be referred to multiple times. ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 02:20, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:ReFill is also helpful in combining duplicate references, but it is mainly used for fixing bare references. – DreamRimmer (talk) 02:38, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like the ticket! I'll give it a try. ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 02:48, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Grorp: There's User:Polygnotus/DuplicateReferences, but I've not used it myself. I did come across it here, inspiring me to do this. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:04, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Redrose64: Thanks! I've tried it out and it works great. ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 03:34, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

VPNgate blocking bot

I am seeking consensus on a proposal to develop and deploy a bot to help block VPNgate IP addresses used by a particular WP:LTA. For WP:DENY/WP:BEANS reasons, I cannot provide full details, but users familiar with the LTA in question will understand the context.

Background

I have tested several VPNgate IPs, and very few of them are currently blocked. According to Wikipedia's policy on open proxies and VPNs (per WP:NOP), these should be blocked. Given the volume of VPNgate IPs, I propose using a bot to automate this process.

This is building off this discussion on WP:BOTREQUESTS.

I am posting here to gauge consensus needed for a WP:BRFA.

Proposal

I propose a bot to automate blocking these VPNgate IPs using the following steps:

The bot will use this list provided by VPNgate, which contains OpenVPN configuration files in Base64 format. The provided "IP" value is only the one that your computer uses to talk to the VPN (and sometimes wrong), not the one used for the VPN to talk to Wikipedia/external internet - this requires testing to uncover.
The bot will iterate through each config file and use OpenVPN to test if it can connect. If successful, it will then use the VPN to send a request to this WhatIsMyIPAddress API to determine the real-world IP address used by each VPN to connect to Wikipedia. This is sometimes the same as the IP used to talk to the VPN - but sometimes completely different, see the demo edit I did using VPNgate on the Bot Requests discussion linked above and I also did one as a reply to this post. Also, testing is needed before blanket blocking because VPNgate claim to fill the list with fake IPs to prevent it from being used for blocking, again see the BR discussion.

Blocking or Reporting:

If the bot is approved as an admin bot, it will immediately block the identified IPs or modify block settings to disable TPA (see Yamla's recent ANI discussion per the necessity for this) and enable auto block.
If the bot is not approved to run as an admin bot, it will add the IPs to an interface-protected JSON file in its userspace for a bot operated by an admin to actually do the blocking.

Additional Information

I have already developed and tested this bot locally using Pywikibot. I have tested it on a local MediaWiki install and it successfully prevents all VPNgate users from editing (should they not be IP block exempt).
I’m posting here to gauge broader community consensus beyond the original WP:BOTREQUESTS discussion.

Poll Options

Oppose: Object to the bot proposal. Feel free to explain why.
Support options:

Admin Bot (admin given code): An admin will run the bot, and I will provide the code for them to run, as well as desired environment setup etc. and will need to send any code changes or packages updates to them to perform. Admin needs to be quite technically competent.
Admin Bot (admin gives me token): An admin provides me with the bot token (scoped per Anomie below) of a newly created account only for this purpose, allowing me to run the code under myself on Toolforge and fully manage environment setup (needs install and config of multiple python and brew packages not needed for standard pywikibot) as well as instantly deploy any needed code changes or dependency updates without bottlenecks. Admin only needs to know how to use Wikipedia UI and navigate to Special:BotToken, check some boxes, and then submit.
Admin Bot (I run it): For this specific case I am permitted to run my own admin bot. Withdrawn per Rchard2scout and WMF viewdeleted policy.
~~Bot without Admin Privileges: The bot will report IPs for potential blocking without admin privileges. Not recommended per large volume.~~ Withdrawn per 98 IPs/hour volume, too much for a human admin.
Non-admin bot v2 (preferred by me): My bot, User:MolecularBot is not an admin bot. It can, however, add IP addresses that it finds are the egress of open VPNgate proxies to User:MolecularBot/IP HitList.json (editable only by the bot and WP:PLIERS/interface admins). This means I can run the code for it and manage the complex environment. An admin's bot will be running the uncomplicated code (doesn't require the complex environment and OpenVPN setup for this bot) to just monitor that page for changes and block any IPs added.

Poll

Oppose for now. From reading that discussion, it looks like the IPs available through the API are only the "ingress" IPs, which is what you connect to on their side when using the VPN (and even then, it seems like the VPN client might sometimes use another IP instead?). If there's actually a publicly available list of outgoing IPs available, I'd be very surprised. From an operational standpoint, those IPs don't need to be public, and if they are, that's a serious error on their side. If we do somehow get our hands on a list, I'd be in favour of option 1. There's plenty of admins available who are able to run bots. --rchard2scout (talk) 08:37, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi rchard2scout, I think you misunderstand the bot. The bot connects to each "ingress" IP and then finds out the "egress" IP that it uses by sending a request to a "what is my IP address API" (not associated with VPNGate in any way), then blocking the egress. This fully disables VPNgate on my local instance of MediaWiki. Thus, a list of egress IPs are not required, because it makes it own by connecting to each of the ingress ones and sending a request. I apologize if my documentation wasn't clear. MolecularPilot ^{🧪️✈️} 08:44, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Noting that I currently do have a complete list of "egress" IPs from my local run of the bot, so should I take your vote as a support of option 1 like you stated? Thank you. MolecularPilot ^{🧪️✈️} 08:45, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, you're right, I somehow missed this. Hadn't had my first coffee yet ;). Striking, adding new vote.
That's so fine, my brain is a little laggy in the early morning as well! My technical/documentation writing probably needs some work as well, it's not my best skill (anyone please feel free to edit this post and make it clearer, if it's wrong I'll just fix it). Thank you for your time in reviewing this even though it's still the early morning where you are! :) MolecularPilot ^{🧪️✈️} 09:38, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support option 1. Options 2 and 3 are probably incompatible with our local and WMF policies, because an admin bot can do anything an admin can do, and you haven't gone through RfA, so you're not allowed access to rights like viewdeleted. Or (@ anyone who know this) are OAuth permissions granular enough that an admin can generate a token that allows a bot access to block but not to other permissions? In any case, I think option 1 is the easiest and safest way, there's plenty of admins available who are able to run bots. --rchard2scout (talk) 08:59, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Rchard2scout, thank you for your new comment and feedback. I hope your morning is going well! Ah yes viewdeleted, silly me to forget about that (I have the opposite problem as you before, it is far too late at night where I live!), I do recall it from someone else's declined proposal of admin sortion, I've struck Option 3 now per WMF legal policy. Re OAuth permissions, I know from using Huggle that when you create a bot token there's a very fine grained list of checkboxed for you to tick, and "block" is in fact one of them, so it is that granular as to avoid all other admin perms, I've expanded Option #2 above to clarify this and more circumstances. I do believe this would be my preferred option, per the reasons I've placed in my expansion, but are really happy with anything as long as we can deal with this LTA. Anyway, enjoy your morning! MolecularPilot ^{🧪️✈️} 11:29, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's no grant allowing block but no other permissions. The minimum additional admin permissions would be block, blockemail, unreviewedpages, and unwatchedpages. Anomie ⚔ 12:33, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support option 5 as well, and that doesn't even need a BRFA or an RFC. We do then need consensus for the adminbot part of that proposal, so perhaps this discussion can focus on that. --rchard2scout (talk) 10:19, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Option 1. I believe this is the only option allowed under policy. Admins need to run admin bots. This RFC is a bit complicated. Usually an RFC of this type would just get consensus for the task ("Is there consensus to run a bot that blocks VPNGate IP addresses?"), with implementation details to be worked out later. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:09, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Option 5 is fine if the bot doesn't need to do any blocking and is just keeping a list up-to-date. Don't even need this RFC or a BRFA if you stick the page in your userspace (WP:EXEMPTBOT). –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:50, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to suggest an alternative approach: Write a bot or Toolforge tool that generates a data feed of IP addresses, starting with VPN Gate egress IP addresses, perhaps including the first seen timestamp and last seen timestamp for each egress. The blocking and unblocking portion of the process is relatively simple and a number of administrators could write, maintain, and run a bot that does that. (I suspect most administrators that run bots would prefer to write their own code to do that.) Daniel Quinlan (talk) 23:04, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I started writing this suggestion before option 5 was added. Since it looks like this is basically the same as that option, put me down as being in favor of Option 5. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 23:15, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- Hahaha, great minds think alike I guess! Thank you for your input. :) MolecularPilot ^{🧪️✈️} 09:33, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Courtesy ping for Rchard2scout and Novem Linguae notifying them of the new preferred option 5 above, which I believe makes everything easier for both myself and the admin who wishes to help me (I'll leave a note on AN asking nicely once BRFA passes for MolecularBot). Also, Skynxnex, you expressed support for option 5 below, did you mean to format that as a support !vote in this section (my apologies for the confusing layout of everything here). Thank you very much to everyone for your time in reviewing this proposal and leaving very helpful feedback. MolecularPilot ^{🧪️✈️} 09:33, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't feel like I've thought about the different aspects to do a bolded !vote yet. Skynxnex (talk) 15:07, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's so fine, thank you anyway for your feedback! :) MolecularPilot ^{🧪️✈️} 23:07, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Hey, it's me, User:MolecularPilot on VPNgate. This VPN is listed as 112.187.104.70 on VPNgate cause that's what my PC talks to. But, this VPN when talking to Wikipedia, uses 121.179.23.53 as shown which is completely different and not listed anywhere on VPNgate, showing the need for actually testing the VPNs and figuring out the output IPs are my bot does. Can this IP please be WP:OPP blocked? 121.179.23.53 (talk) 06:22, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- Can confirm this is me! :) MolecularPilot ^{🧪️✈️} 06:24, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is a relevant Phabricator ticket: T380917. – DreamRimmer (talk) 12:02, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think non-admins can run admin bots. Perhaps you would like to publicly post your source code, then ask an admin to run it? cc Daniel Quinlan. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:05, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think blocking a single VPN provider will have the effect people want it to have. It's easy for a disruptive editor to switch VPNs. This is really a problem that needs to be solved by WMF. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 15:45, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Daniel Quinlan, I guess I didn't make this clear enough in the post but this is designed to work with existing WMF proposals that are being worked on. Both T380917 and T354599 block/give higher edit filter scrutiny based on existing lists of "bad" IPs, this is the same as the old ST47ProxyBot (which actually does scanning but doesn't monitor "egress" IPs, it only attempts to connect to the "ingress" and then blocks it if successfully). This is great for a wide variety of proxy services because ingress/egress is the same, but for modern, more advanced services like VPNgate (and perhaps some services that because a problem for us in future) the ingress IP address is often not the same as the one used to edit Wikipedia, and so requires this solution (this bot). I'll admit that blocking VPNgate won't fully stop this LTA or all proxy vandals but VPNgate is quite a large and widely used network (claiming a total of 18,810,237,498 lifetime connections) that is currently almost fully permitted to edit Wikipedia, and by blocking it this significantly reduces the surface area for proxy attacks. This also creates the infrastructure for easily blocking any future VPN services that use different ingress/egress IPs - the bot can be easily expanded to use new lists. MolecularPilot ^{🧪️✈️} 21:14, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What is the actual expected volume per day of new IPs to block? It looks like the current list has 98 ingress IPs (if I'm understanding the configuration blocks correctly). I'll also say I have pretty strong concerns about sharing "personal" tokens of any kind between users, particularly admin permission ones with non-admins. Skynxnex (talk) 19:48, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The list available through this API frequently rotates. It only provides 98 ingress IPs at a time, as you stated and refetching the list without [some duration of time, from my estimates it's around 1 hour] passing returns the same 98 IPs. After 1 hour (estimated) passes, a new 98 IPs are randomly selected to be provided to all users - but these may include some of the same IPs as before because they are picked by random selection from the whole list of 6057 (not available to the public), this has happened a couple times during my data gathering. Therefore re volume per hour, the maximum number of IPs to be blocked is 98, but it could be less due to already blocked IPs being included in that given hour's sample of 98, I hope this makes sense if there's anything that needs clarifying please don't hesitate to ask. MolecularPilot ^{🧪️✈️} 21:34, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Re "personal" tokens it's actually not a "personal" token to the admin's account, it would be (in theory) a token to an adminbot account with the only things it can be used for being those helpfully specified by Anomie above. However, regardless I see the concerns so I've added a proposal 5 which hopefully is a decent compromise above and ensures that I don't have access to any admin perms/tokens, but that there aren't any bottlenecks and that admins don't need to setup a complex running environment. Thank you for your time in commenting, Skynxnex. MolecularPilot ^{🧪️✈️} 22:23, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I see bot tokens as fairly similar to personal tokens since bots are associated with an operator. I think proposal 5 has promise. Skynxnex (talk) 23:08, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

VPN Gate claims they have about 6,000 servers which is fairly close to my own estimate of how many IPs they are using. If we block each IP for six months, we'd end up averaging about 33 blocks per day. There would be a pretty large influx at the start, but I would want to spread that out over at least several weeks to avoid flooding the block log as badly as ST47ProxyBot did. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 23:10, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's worth noting that an unknown amount of 'servers' are user computers that people have volunteered cpu time for (this information is somewhere on the website), so, like we see often with IP users, the IP that each server uses can and likely will change with time. This doesn't mean that an effort like this bot won't help, of course, but it's unknown how effective (as a percentage) it would be with just 33 blocks a day. – 2804:F1...33:D1A2 (::/32) (talk) 23:47, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
33 blocks per day is a rough estimate, not a limit. Certainly there will be some delay when adding entries to any list generated as proposed above so the block rate will never reach 100%, but the egress IPs don't seem to change that much over time based on what I've seen. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 00:09, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So, I'm posting this anonymously through VPNGate because I don't want people to start suspecting me of things just because I admit to having used a VPN service some others are abusing to make disruptive edits here. Due to its strong base in Japan, I've used VPNGate many times in order to shop at Japanese web stores that block purchases from outside Japan (they typically don't want to offer international support and see this as the easiest solution for avoiding that), and I know a number of other people who've used it for similar reasons (also for Korea, which often has even more hosts available than Japan).

In any case, while I've personally never enabled this on my PC, I can confirm what IP 2804: said: there's definitely a swarm of short-term volunteer IPs associated with this service who aren't part of VPNGate proper. The overlap between such people and good faith Wikipedia editors may not be large, but it's unlikely to be zero. Unless you have a good mechanism to avoid excessively punishing such users for popping up on your list for the short period of time they themselves use the VPN, maybe it's better to wait for and official WMF solution, which (based on the phabs) seems to intend to take "IP reputation" into account and would thus likely exclude such ephemerals, or at least give them very short term blocks compared to the main servers. Because getting blocked here for several months for having been part of VPNGate for a few hours hardly seems fair.

Actually, now that I think about it: if you're going to connect to VPNGate servers for the express purpose of determining and blocking their exit IPs, you'd probably be in violation of their TOS. While you might consider this an "ends justifying the means" situation, are you sure you want to associate the WMF with such unauthorized usage? There's a difference between port scanning or getting an IP list via an API and actually traversing the VPN in order to investigate it. This absolutely is not a legal threat by me, but if VPNGate were to learn of this, I wouldn't be surprised if they took action. Aren't there enough services out there that provide VPN IP lists without having to roll your own scanner? It would seem a safer bet for the WMF to use something like that. 125.161.156.63 (talk) 16:05, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, you didn't have to anonymise yourself, we don't cast WP:ASPERSIONS here and now you won't get a reply notification but that's okay! :) I checked the terms of service of their website before making their bot and it just says not to do anything IRL illegal otherwise they'll give your logged data to authorities if subpoenaed, but I will reach out to the VPNgate operators in Japanese (good practice opportunity, huh) when I have time just to double-confirm they're okay with everything. But btw, they encourage checking that your IP has changed to demonstrate it has worked in their how-to-guides, and this isn't 'tranaversing" as we're not collecting data on every single node but only the public IP of the exit node. Re short-term volunteers, that's a great point, and I'll update the JSON schema of its published data to include a "number of sightings" number, so that the blocking adminbot would escalate blocks as this increases so maybe it starts really short term like 2.5 days/60 hours (6000 active volunteers on average, divided by 100 checked every hour, minimum time to ensure the IP has truly stopped) if it's just 1 sighting but ramps up exponentially if it's seen again as an egress IP untill we're talking like 6months - 2 years blocks. Re WMF tickets, the distributed fact of VPNgate that anyone can start hosting means that most VPNgate IP addresses won't have a bad "reputation" (I checked a whole bunch on a variety of reputation lists and the egresses always had "good"" reputations) so reputation checking won't help (but they need short term blocks), also as you can't publically see the egress with VPNgate cause it's different to ingress (unlike most networks). So WMF solutions are actually quite innovative and smart for most VPN/proxy networks, it's just that VPNgate is a bit different needing a unique solution, this bot. MolecularPilot ^{🧪️✈️} 04:43, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I guess I'm just too careful or chicken even if most people would refrain from casting aspersions.

I don't quite understand why you say you're not traversing. You're not just touching the network from one side, you're passing through it and coming out on the other side, that's traversing. However if they don't mind it, then I guess you're in luck. Ecxept maybe if those Japanese laws they mention a mllion times in their documents have a problem with something like this.

I don't know what the WMF is basing its reputation measurements on. My meaning was that sites like browserleaks.com almost always seem to know about the VPN status of the exit nodes I've used over time. I don't know where they're getting this information from exactly, but that's what I meant by reputation, not whether they're good or bad but what they're known to engage in, like being a VPN node. And that database is probabably built either through collaboration or by specialized services, which the WNF can use as well. Like email providers use common antispam databases instead of each rolling their own.

In any case, good luck with your bot, because I'm afraid these persistent abusers you want to keep out by this probably won't be averse to paying for commercial VPNs if they have to, and many of those only cost a handful of bucks a month. Commercial companies will almost certainly have a TOS that would prohibit your bot, so to counter them the WMF would in the end still have to resort to a specialist or collaborative VPN IP list of some kind. You can probably cut down on casual troublemakers by tracking VPNGate but I don't think it'll help all that much much against anyone highly motivated. They can even continue using VPNGate, it'll just be less convenient because they have to find brand new nodes before you catch those.

92.253.31.37 (talk) 17:39, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what you mean by "Japanese Laws" they keep mentioning they don't seem to mention any, when I told you that the ToS said don't do anything irl illegal I was referring to this ToS page which doesn't mention any "Japanese Laws" but just says don't do anything like CSAM like your government can subpoena us for, because we'll comply (and directions for LEOs to request this). Re reputation yes, the major VPNgate nodes that have done it for a while do have bad reputations, particularly 219.100.37.0/24 which is the example servers run by the university themselves - but as you said, because anyone can start a VPNgate server and then there's always brand new nodes that won't have bad reputations and can be abused. But - as I've stated in a different discussion above, the list of VPN servers to connect to only updates with new servers hourly, so while reputation services won't catch the new exit nodes (because they won't be used poorly enough to trigger flagging for a white), the bot constantly waits for updates to the list and then immediately tests it to determine the new egress IPs. Re commercial services generally, unlike VPNgate, they use datacenters and static IPs that are assigned to "Hotspot Shield, Inc." (as an example) so it's easy to CIDR range block them and also the reputation of those deteriorates over time as they do bad things - the companies don't randomly get new IPs in random locations around the world, like VPNgate. In fact commercial reputation services excel at identifying commercial services (from my testing), but VPNgate is community distributed, like Wikipedia, and needs a unique approach. And yes, as I said to Daniel, I'll admit that blocking VPNgate won't fully stop this LTA or all proxy vandals but VPNgate is quite a large and widely used network (claiming a total of 18,810,237,498 lifetime connections) that is currently almost fully permitted to edit Wikipedia (the bot currently has 146 IPs in its list and as shown by the stats section of the toolforge frontend, ~60% are currently unblocked (and this is an underestimate because the list is mainly the "obvious" ones that are always provided first in the 98 hourly sample, like 219.100.37.0/24. This is because the bot has only had 1 full run of all IPs in a given hour's list, and many failed partial runs of just the first couple. I think blocking VPNgate significantly reduces the surface area for proxy attacks - only looking at only 10 of the blocked IPs I see link spam, edit warring, block evasion, vandalism and our favourite WP:LTA. MolecularPilot ^{🧪️✈️} 08:38, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sub-referencing: Request for feedback

Hello, I’m Johannes from the WMDE Technical Wishes team. Four months ago, we reached out to the community to discuss the new sub-referencing feature we are currently working on. Thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts and feedback on meta:Talk:WMDE Technical Wishes/Sub-referencing or in local village pump discussions!

We would like to ask for your perspective again, because we’ve made changes to the wikitext syntax of sub-referencing, based on the feedback we’ve received and because it’s the only viable way of dealing with some technical limitations. Please visit meta:Talk:WMDE Technical Wishes/Sub-referencing#Request for feedback to read more about our approach for inline sub-referencing and share your thoughts! Thanks Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 14:06, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Page may not contain recent updates.

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T382388

I assume this has something to do with how new MediaWiki versions are tested on Thursdays (to the best of my recollection), but the footer all pages on desktop now displays "This page was last edited on [date], at [time]. Warning: Page may not contain recent updates."

This isn't terribly helpful (my first thought was a 'this page may not reflect recent developments in the subject matter,' but I'm fairly sure it actually means 'someone could have edited this page in the time since you opened it.' I think it's possible to display a message if the page has been updated since it's opened (the reply tool does this).

Though prompting the reader to reload the page could present the issue of the most recent edit being vandalism, I think it'd overall be beneficial (such as the case of rapidly developing events).

I was able to find a few related things, if of any help. Searching "page may not contain recent updates" (w/ quotes) on Google yields results that seemingly are cached versions of this message on other MediaWiki wikis. Phab:T226634 from 2019 contains the message at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T226634#5285990 Jay Cubby 00:35, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed a Changes newer than x seconds may not appear in this list. on Special:Contributions, hadn't noticed it anywhere else. I checked it and the message is MediaWiki:lag-warn-normal, which makes me thing that we are maybe experiencing server lag? – 2804:F1...33:D1A2 (::/32) (talk) 00:41, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Now I don't see it anymore (as of a couple seconds ago). Weird.

here's a screenshot

And now I see it again! Jay Cubby 00:45, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I just saw it, it's MediaWiki:Laggedreplicamode - pretty sure it's just lag.

Of course, ~~it's quite possibly still a WP:THURSDAY problem~~, but this isn't new behaviour. – 2804:F1...33:D1A2 (::/32) (talk) 00:49, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like today isn't Thursday, despite my wishes. Jay Cubby 01:23, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm getting the same nessage on my watch list, user contributions and noticeboards Knitsey (talk) 00:46, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Huh. I'm not able to view it at VPT, but I can see it on my watchlist. Not AN though. Jay Cubby 00:49, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is indicative of replication lag. Elli (talk | contribs) 00:48, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing substantial at wikimediastatus.net, but maybe that's not the place to look. Jay Cubby 00:51, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

https://replag.toolforge.org/ - just be aware that this is a live feed, meaning it's often 0, but if you refresh during a multiple seconds lag you can gradually see the count go up until the lag has passed (where it then goes back to 0) – 2804:F1...33:D1A2 (::/32) (talk) 01:09, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Due to high database server lag, changes newer than 121 seconds may not appear in this list., well then.

Most I saw were ~20 seconds maximum, that was a big one. – 2804:F1...33:D1A2 (::/32) (talk) 01:16, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the graph that @AntiCompositeNumber posted in the phab (adjusting the time), it looks like the lag completely stopped after the 2 minutes lag on eqiad...

Did someone do something? – 2804:F1...33:D1A2 (::/32) (talk) 01:28, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There was some maintenance on invalid skin preference values that didn't get mentioned in the server admin log and was more impactful than expected. The replag went away when the script finished. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 14:31, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why are frwiki talk pages so much nicer than ours?

Take a look at (for example) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Oracle#Li_M'H%C3%A2_Ong_(2). This seems to be typical of talk pages on frwiki. The threading of replies is so much easier to follow. Is this just some snazzier CSS they're using, or something fundamentally better to edit the pages? RoySmith (talk) 01:07, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like just some snazzy CSS. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:09, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I see no reason not to adopt the CSS over here, or some other form of threaded discussion by default.Jay Cubby 01:22, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are some gadgets that support it. I think ConvenientDiscussions is one of them. I'm not a general fan of the styling. Izno (talk) 02:08, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A screenshot of Convenient Discussions for reference:

Threads are collapsible, and a change is coming that would allow to collapse/expand all replies to a comment in one click, similar to how you can do that on Reddit with a +/− button.

And, of course, pure CSS is only a half-solution here since markup and HTML produced by it are trickier and don't correspond to the actual comment structure as one-to-one. Jack who built the house (talk) 05:31, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'd love to see that too! – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 23:06, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I created my own experimental CSS stylesheet to add style formatting to discussion threads; see User:Isaacl/style/discussion-threads for an example of how it looks and instructions on using it. There is an accompanying user script to temporarily turn the style formatting off for the current page, should you want to see how the page looks by default. isaacl (talk) 02:25, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't personally like that layout, but the customer is always correct in matters of taste I suppose? It's just styling hacks (see without). frwiki has thousands of lines of custom css being loaded by default (e.g. from w:fr:MediaWiki:common.css , w:fr:MediaWiki:Vector-2022.css, w:fr:MediaWiki:Gadget-Mobile.css). Someone could write a "pretty talk pages" script here, and if it was popular we could make it available as a gadget. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:53, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What's been done in the past is A/B testing of different gimmicks by the WMF. I'd be curious to see the rate of abandoned comments now versus with a shiny new layout is. Jay Cubby 15:16, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My stylesheet continues to be used by (double-checks)... only me. I like it, but it's not evident yet that there's a significant demand for different styling of discussion threads. isaacl (talk) 18:17, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That looks HIDEOUS. All the boxes and colors distract me from the text. I would find it harder to follow those conversations. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:51, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The threading is entirely frwiki's custom CSS. It's pretty easy to do, with how talk pages use nested definition-list syntax for discussions already; body.ext-discussiontools-replytool-enabled dd { border-left: 2px solid lavender; padding-left: 1ex; } gets you about 95% of the way there. There's plenty of room to get fancier, of course. (And sometime people use unordered lists instead, which would need to be handled separately.)

There's also a visible difference since enwiki is the only place that the DiscussionTools "visual enhancements" haven't been turned on yet (T379102). That's why they have the fancier thread summaries in the topic list and under the headings, and the more button-like reply links. If you're curious what that'd be like here, you can turn it on with the dtenable URL parameter.

We did experiment with going much further in page-reformatting with DiscussionTools as well. You can see our structure-debug page for an example of that. It's actually what the talk pages in the mobile apps use now -- they get the talk page data from the DiscussionTools API and build the view from that, rather than from the normal wikitext render. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 16:39, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This looks so cool! I'm really looking forward to it on enwiki :) any way I can opt-in to DiscussionTools improvements like this sooner? – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 03:45, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You can enable DiscussionTools in the beta menu. I don't know where that's located in Vector 2022's menu (I use MonoBook), but it's in there. ♠JCW555 (talk)♠ 04:46, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Right, I have it on, but it looks like FrWiki and other wikis are using a newer version with more features (which is what I'm interested in). – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 19:46, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, those boxes don't show up on mobile. That issue, combined with the fact that replies aren't as far apart in the new version, makes it harder for mobile users to tell who is replying to who compared to the current version. QuicoleJR (talk) 19:05, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Woah, it looks like MediaWiki has an even nicer talk page GUI? Any way I can enable that on all wikis? – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 19:56, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have since learned that this would be a terrible idea. (I still like the look, though, and it would be great to have some way to sort threads by age.) – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 20:14, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It would be indeed great to have more control over sorting threads, especially since there are a number of wikis (including the main wiki I contribute to, Russian Wikipedia) which have to resort to bad hacks to display certain forum pages in recent-oldest sorting order and not oldest-recent as it is default. It would’ve been great to see these hacks made obsolete with DiscussionTools, see phab:T313165, but AFAIK no one actively develops it any more, so I guess we’ll have to wait till WMF decides to fund it again. stjn 21:40, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's Flow. It failed for complicated reasons, has limped along unmaintained since 2016-ish, and is currently in the process of being completely removed now that DiscussionTools was deployed as the outcome of the 2019 talk pages consultation. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is also as ugly as homemade sin. Way too much whitespace.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 20:47, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Undesirable (and new?) line wrapping

I don't know if it's just me noticing something that has been there for a long time, or if something new is happening, or if my CSS or browser is to blame, but I am noticing undesirable line wrapping that I have not seen before. I am seeing references after full stops (periods) that wrap to the next line. I'm seeing the ")" in "f/16)" (in the lead of Exposure value) wrapping to the next line. And I think one other kind of wrapping that should not be happening but that I can't remember at the moment. I don't think this sort of wrapping was happening before; references stayed with the preceding punctuation, and a closing parenthesis would stay with the text that preceded it. I could be wrong or misremembering, of course. My gut feeling is that I just started noticing it in the last month or so.

If it's just me, I'll live with it, but I thought I would post here to see if this prompts anyone else to chime in. I am using Vector 2022 on the latest Firefox for Mac OS. I can link to example pages and even provide screen shots as needed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:01, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am seeing references after full stops (periods) that wrap to the next line.

This has unfortunately always been the case. I found Phab tasks and comments documenting this going back to 2016: T100112#2027495, T125480. There have been cases where line wrapping around references behaved even worse than that (interesting ones I found: T96487, T110057, T132255), and those have been fixed.

I'm seeing the ")" in "f/16)" (in the lead of Exposure value) wrapping to the next line

I can reproduce this, screenshot for reference: F58028918. This is caused by using display: inline-block; in the template {{f/}} (basically the same issue as T110057 mentioned above, actually). It was added not quite a year ago: [4]. I'm not sure what these rules are for, but someone could probably find a way to do this differently and avoid the problem.

And I think one other kind of wrapping that should not be happening but that I can't remember at the moment.

Well, it's a bit tricky to guess from that ;), but my crystal ball shows me you're thinking of T353005, where some error and warning messages now break words with hyphens when wrapping lines, starting also about a year ago. I heard a few people complain about that and I find it a bit unpleasant myself. Did I guess right?

Matma Rex talk 01:54, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Adding a &zwj; after the span in {{f/}}, as shown in Special:Diff/1263967231, would at least fix the issue in that template. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:15, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with NOT wrapping (especially when dictated by templates), is that it works for 90% of the cases. But there is also the 10% of cases where the value is too small to fit in the infobox or on a mobile screen in 1 line. But the templates can't make that distinction, so it's generally a bad idea to put 'no wrap' as a default in a template. Overall it is better to depend on the browser to mostly do things right and not fret too much about the occasional times that it gets it wrong. Because flipping that assumption around tends to create harder to maintain wikitext that gets it wrong about the same or even more often. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:36, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the responses. As I said, I really can't tell if I'm seeing something new, or if I noticed one and now the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is in effect. If I see something really egregious, I'll take a screen shot. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:50, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

contentious topics/aware plus "topic code"

i want to add the contentious topics/aware template to the top of my talkpage, but the list of topic codes says to substitute the template so i did but the israel/palestine topic code did not display. how do i include the topic code? Daddyelectrolux (talk) 19:04, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Daddyelectrolux You don't need to subst that template, you would just do {{Contentious topics/aware|a-i}}. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:51, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

the topic codes page states that the template should be substituted. perhaps that should be removed, to avoid new people from make my same mistake? thank you User:Ahecht. :) Daddyelectrolux (talk) 00:23, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Daddyelectrolux: You wanted to use Template:Contentious topics/aware which doesn't say to use subst. Template:Contentious topics/table is used to document other templates and it varies whether they require subst. I have added this to the documentation.[5] PrimeHunter (talk) 12:14, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To be fair, up until yesterday Template:Contentious topics/aware/doc just linked to Template:Contentious topics/table. I updated it so that it properly transcludes the table, which hides the subst: syntax. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:27, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Updating broken JavaScript user script for adding a template to RefToolbar 2.0

Hi! Hopefully this is the right place to put this. Template:Cite RCDB's documentation contains a suggested user script to add the template to RefToolbar 2.0. However, it imports User:Mr.Z-man/refToolbar 2.0.js, which hasn't been a think since 2013. On the page is now a note saying "This script is now enabled by default." The existing script, however, does not work out of the box, throwing the error below. If someone who knows JS could help modify the script to work without the linked user script, that would be great!

VM385:2 Uncaught ReferenceError: $j is not defined
    at <anonymous>:2:913
    at globalEval (startup.js:1141:17)
    at runScript (startup.js:1292:6)
    at enqueue (startup.js:1179:5)
    at execute (startup.js:1399:5)
    at doPropagation (startup.js:748:6)

Plighting Engineerd (talk) 01:38, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The instructions were VERY VERY outdated. I have updated them and tested the 'new' fragment and it works. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:43, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much! Works perfectly now! Plighting Engineerd (talk) 13:23, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Site is under maintenance

I was unable to complete an edit a few minutes ago. I got an error message saying the site was under maintenance. Clicking on "back" did get me the edit I was trying to make and a few seconds later I was successful.

I posted just for documentation but I am having difficulty with a site that is very slow and I came here to do an edit to have something to do while waiting for pages on that slow site to come up. The slow site slows everything else down.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:21, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]