Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Interwiki/interlanguage links not changing to secure

Policy

Technical

Proposals

Idea lab

WMF

Miscellaneous

• Table of contents
• First discussion
• Jump to bottom
• New topic
• All village pumps

Shortcuts

• WP:VPTWP:VPT
• WP:VP/TWP:VP/T
• WP:TECHPUMPWP:TECHPUMP
• WP:PUMPTECHWP:PUMPTECH

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

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

view · edit Frequently asked questions (see also: Wikipedia:FAQ/Technical) Click "[show]" next to each point to see more details. If something looks wrong, purge the server's cache, then bypass your browser's cache. This tends to solve most issues, including improper display of images, user-preferences not loading, and old versions of pages being shown. No, we will not use JavaScript to set focus on the search box. This would interfere with usability, accessibility, keyboard navigation and standard forms. See task 3864. There is an accesskey property on it (default to accesskey="f" in English). Logged-in users can enable the "Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page" gadget in their preferences. No, we will not add a spell-checker, or spell-checking bot. You can use a web browser such as Firefox, which has a spell checker. An offline spellcheck of all articles is run by Wikipedia:Typo Team/moss; human volunteers are needed to resolve potential typos. If you have problems making your fancy signature work, check Help:How to fix your signature. If you changed to another skin and cannot change back, use this link. Alternatively, you can press Tab until the "Save" button is highlighted, and press Enter. Using Mozilla Firefox also seems to solve the problem. If an image thumbnail is not showing, try purging its image description page. If the image is from Wikimedia Commons, you might have to purge there too. If it doesn't work, try again before doing anything else. Some ad blockers, proxies, or firewalls block URLs containing /ad/ or ending in common executable suffixes. This can cause some images or articles to not appear. For server or network status, please see Wikimedia Status. If you cannot reach Wikipedia services, see Reporting a connectivity issue.

« Archives, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226

Is there any option other than WP:RX to get BBC paywalled articles? (That is, do I have to go to RX every time I need a BBC article, or is there another route?) They aren't in ProQuest, they aren't in archive.org, and the price they've put on the subscription is absurd. Is it only the US that is paywalled? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:35, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

i didn't know bbc was paywalled, they never asked me to subscribe, do you have a link? Gryllida 02:52, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@SandyGeorgia: For clarity, WP:RX means asking a someone else to find the article and somehow distribute it to you. I assume you have tried https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org. Yes it seems to be US only.[1]. Do you have an example of an article that is paywalled (I can't see experience the paywall in Australia). Is this 2017 BBC.com article paywalled and the archive.org stored version not available?

I think a Virtual private network (VPN) may allow you to mask your IP address as from the UK and access the articles. There could be free options, and given the small bandwidth of text articles speed is not a great concern for you. Commander Keane (talk) 02:55, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Commander Keane thanks for the help!

I'm often at WP:RX, but I hope to not have to go there every time I need to see a BBC article! Yes, I can see that 2017 article you link; I think it's only newer articles that are affected in the US (how rude - and it's $8.99 per month to subscribe, which is steep). I use WP:TWL for many US sources, but don't see the BBC anywhere there. I don't know anything about VPNs and am too old to learn! So I'll stop citing the BBC, but I need access for a copyvio check.

The article I need is "Maduro says Trump wants Venezuela's oil. But is that the real US goal?" If anyone can email it to me, I guess I'll have to put up a cot at WP:RX. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:19, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@SandyGeorgia: Check your inbox. – DreamRimmer ■ 10:39, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@SandyGeorgia: If you Google "online VPN", you can find a number of services that'll proxy you to an IP in a given country without you having to download anything or register an account. These aren't very helpful for most of the things people use VPNs for, due to limited bandwidth and poor privacy, but should work fine for the specific use-case of accessing news articles. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 10:55, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

SandyGeorgia, archive.is should work. — Qwerfjkltalk 16:26, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@DreamRimmer, Tamzin, and Qwerfjkl: thank you all for the help. Tamzin, I'm afraid of trying to set up a VPN; old dog, new tricks, afraid I'll do something that will cause me a problem ... but I appreciate the tips and will look into it. Thx also DreamRimmer. I think what would work best going forward would be for me to have a way for someone to archive the non-paywalled version as Qwerfjkl did, as I (and anyone else who needs to) can see that ! I will ask around to see if there is an editor outside of the US who will archive.is any article I need. Thanks again, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:50, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

SandyGeorgia, you should be able to archive any page yourself, on archive.is. — Qwerfjkltalk 13:13, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It would do no good for me to archive a page I can't access :) I'd be archiving the paywalled URL ... but if someone who has access can archive a BBC page, then those in the US can see it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:14, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

SandyGeorgia, I think archive.is archives it on their servers, so whether you can access it or not doesn't affect it. — Qwerfjkltalk 16:17, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thx ... next time I need to access BBC, I'll check there! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:09, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

But for now, to deal with another in a long string of copyvio. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:55, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You can reach out to me at any time. I will be happy to provide archived copies. – DreamRimmer ■ 18:17, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much, DreamRimmer; if things ever settle down for me, I may try a VPN per Tamzin, but in a pinch, I'll ping you! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:24, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Depending on how fast your connection is, I've been able to pre-empt the paywall by clicking the "x" button to stop loading the page before it gets to the paywall. MSG17 (talk) 08:43, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

MSG17, you can achieve a similar effect by spamming the escape key (and you can throttle your network speed in the browser dev tools). — Qwerfjkltalk 12:12, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you look at portals, like Portal:Math, they have click-to-purge buttons that update the page. Recently, I added a portal to User:ProcBot/PurgeList, which calls a bot to purge a page (daily, weekly, or however the editor specifies). I saw that no other portals are listed there. I'm going down a bit of a rabbit hole now. Are any other portals (which must be purged to update their rotating content) purged by some other bot? And if not, why do we use the click-to-purge links? I can't imagine most readers would (a) understand what it means, (b) feel comfortable doing it, and (c) then click to purge the portal. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 12:35, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Portals often display content that updates automatically through templates and subpages, but caching can cause outdated versions to remain visible for some time. The purge link exists as a simple manual mechanism to clear the cache so the portal immediately reflects the current state of its underlying content. It is mainly intended for editors maintaining the portal rather than for readers. ProcBot previously performed scheduled purges, but that task is now inactive. – DreamRimmer ■ 13:01, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Purging of portals is mostly to change a random selection of content and not to ensure the portal is up to date. If a transcluded page is edited then a page is automatically updated (sometimes with a delay, see Help:Job queue) so even without requested purges, there will be updates. Portals generally don't have time-sensitive content so they don't need frequent purges. I'm not aware of any bots purging portals. I don't know how many readers do it but does it matter? If a reader does want to see other articles then the link saying "Refresh with new selections below (purge)" at Portal:Mathematics doesn't sound uncomfortable to me. Most readers may not realize it affects everybody. I have also heard there is a process which automatically reparses all pages sometimes but the interval may be long and I don't know whether it happens for all namespaces. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:12, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ProcBot did not explicitly purge portals, but was used to purge specified pages or categories, and it is now inactive. When I work on the admin newsletter, I often need to purge the main page so that content transcluded from subpages updates. Based on that experience, I assumed that portals, which also transclude templates and subpages, may likewise need purging for changes to appear. I have not worked much with portals before, so my assumption could be wrong. – DreamRimmer ■ 13:22, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, this is more the nuts and bolts than the rationale. I think, reading between the lines, the rationale is that the purge-to-update and click-to-purge method is good enough. I am thinking about updating documentation on deleting/automating old portals, and didn't want to write any bogus advice. I will probably start that discussion somewhere else, where editors interested in portals might better find it. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 03:45, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Alas, band timelines are code that I am not good playing with.

I am trying to make a significant change to this timeline. Basically I want the whole bottom section to go - everything from "ex-Batushka/Patriarkh" down to "MK", as it is presently showing two concurrent bands unnecessarily. I managed to get rid of the actual coloured horizontal bars, but everything else remains. The vertical yellow "split" line can stay.

Can someone help? — Czello ^(music) 16:11, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Done in Special:Diff/1327873071/1328474326. To compare: Special:Permalink/1327873071#Timeline and Special:Permalink/1328474326#Timeline. Feel free to revert if I removed too many lines. —⁠andrybak (talk) 02:48, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! Very much appreciated. — Czello ^(music) 08:15, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Even with system and browser settings to reduce motion, the latest redesigns can still cause motion sickness.

1. Since the Vector Redesign, Wikipedia has had wide non-scrolling sidebars. If I don't hide these before paging down, the mismatch causes motion sickness. If I do hide these, then I get a header instead, and *this* header doesn't give me trouble, but each new page gets a new set of sidebars. I tried keeping Wikipedia pages zoomed-in to *continuously* hide these, but then I get a non-scrolling pop-up instead, so the mismatch still causes motion sickness. Ymmv.

2. Now, it also has another header about a temporary account. This causes a stutter effect as *this* header hides, with 2 short jumps instead of 1 long jump, when paging down.

I don't have a phab account to post a proper bug report there. ~2025-31543-88 (talk) 00:07, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The sidebars should stay hidden, but you might have something about your browser's cookie settings causing that not to be the case. The issue is likely to go away if you register a permanent account, which look for your saved preferences rather than for a cookie. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 02:28, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

have you tried timeless skin? Need a login or an URL param. Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra?useskin=timeless Regards, Gryllida 04:54, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Or indeed any skin that isn't Vector 2022, that being the only one which has sticky sidebars. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:08, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Dislike Vector 2022. — DVRTed (Talk) 23:40, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to add a source to WP:RSP, but the page has hit a technical limit. Last month WP:RSP RFC 2025 was closed and I presume work is ongoing there, but in the meantime, is there any stop-gap or temporary mitigation that could be used to make additions to that list? Thanks! Smallangryplanet (talk) 12:21, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Smallangryplanet Probably should ask at WT:RSP. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:20, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, ok--will do! I wasn't sure if there was a purely technical way around this. Thanks! Smallangryplanet (talk) 19:05, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Can anyone else see an issue with the page User talk:Pennsy22? Near the bottom around the section "Nominations now open for the WikiProject Military history newcomer of the year and military historian of the year", I can see the footer of the page displayed on top of the talk page content — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:40, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can't see the footer; the page content is on top of it in Vector 22 (Firefox on Linux). :D Izno (talk) 16:50, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I found the footer – it's overlaid on top of section Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Royal Norwegian Navy ship infobox templates. —⁠andrybak (talk) 17:44, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I found an unmatched <div> - has that fixed it? -- John of Reading (talk) 17:52, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looks fixed to me. Thank you. —⁠andrybak (talk) 18:05, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks everyone — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:11, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm trying to modify a Wikipedia article using a bookmarklet and don't really know what I'm doing. I noticed the following (Firefox 146.0): if I go to any website other than Wikipedia, open the developer tools/Console, type in

document.open();
document.write('Hi');
document.close();

and run it, the website will be replaced by 'Hi', as expected. But on any Wikipedia page, whether logged-in or not, I get an empty page instead: nobody says 'Hi', it is sad. I thought maybe the text color is white, but that doesn't seem to be it, and then I ran out of ideas. AxelBoldt (talk) 00:46, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This result is apparently predictable but I don't know why. Izno (talk) 01:42, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Aha! Thank you. AxelBoldt (talk) 02:03, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki overrides the document.write function to do nothing, because people used to use it to load scripts in their common.js (like in that example Izno linked), until some changes to improve page load performance caused this call to replace the whole page instead of adding to it, making these people unable to access the site (T193191).

If you really want to replace the whole page, try this way instead:

document.documentElement.innerHTML = 'Hi';

Matma Rex talk 11:36, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 You are invited to join the discussion at Help talk:Citation Style 1 § COinS pollution shouldn't be a problem. –CopperyMarrow15 (talk ⋅ edits) 04:42, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all, does anyone know why Legobot has stopped removing/archiving old closed discussions from WP:MFD? They're starting to pile up at the bottom. Left guide (talk) 17:15, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See also: User talk:Legoktm#Legobot –Novem Linguae (talk) 14:33, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Fixed –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:23, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to undo my edit to {{extract short description}}. The edit filter won't let me, claiming the presence of an external link to about.com. 😭 Help? Paradoctor (talk) 18:21, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I skimmed through the blacklist regexes but couldn't figure out why it's happening. Awaiting someone to the rescue. — DVRTed (Talk) 18:39, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I managed to revert the edit via rollback, albeit I have zero idea what's wrong with the spam blacklist. Tenshi! (Talk page) 18:48, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, that solves my immediate problem. Now I only need to find out why the same code that works at User:Paradoctor/extract SD refuses cooperation in it's rightful place. Paradoctor (talk) 18:51, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you ask the API for details of the parse for the previous revision: Special:ApiSandbox#action=parse&oldid=861127694&prop=externallinks it returns a long list of external links that supposedly exist in it, including one link to urbanlegends.about.com. I think this is because the template documentation page uses the page 13 (number) as an example, and those links appear there, and using the template technically transcludes that page. Matma Rex talk 18:53, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This seems related to the bug that brought me there in the first place. I'll take it from here. Thanks to everyone for the assist.

Resolved

Paradoctor (talk) 19:00, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The spam block list log [2] confirms it was http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/friday_the_13th.htm which is in 13 (number). Transcluding a page with a link shouldn't trigger the spam blacklist if the link isn't produced in the page you are trying to save, but the link is in ref tags which are treated specially in some situations so I guess this is such a situation. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:05, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have added notes to the documentation.[3] Maybe it should also be reported in Phabricator. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:33, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) It might be the transclusion at User:Berkeczsolt/sandbox which does use the example code from the doc. Tenshi! (Talk page) 19:01, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That page wasn't involved in the edit by Paradoctor so it looks irrelevant. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:05, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Previous discussions:

• Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 60 § Bot to block Proxy/VPN IPs (ST47ProxyBot replacement)
• Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 217 § VPNgate blocking bot

ST47ProxyBot used to block open proxies obtained through a variety of sources. However, the owner, and consequently the bot, has retired, and we're seeing a proliferation of abusive proxies and VPNs used by a variety of spammers and LTAs. Sometimes, when I look at the block log of some of these IPs, I find that they've been previously blocked by ST47ProxyBot. I think someone (an admin, per WP:ADMINBOT) should resurrect ST47ProxyBot or create something new that does the same thing. I am aware that such bots may flood block logs, but this does seem necessary to prevent abuse. Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 18:54, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This would also cause a lot of collateral damage (see this discussion on Meta). It's a tough balancing act. Graham87 (talk) 03:09, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We still do put global blocks on open proxies, but usually reactively. If someone really wants to work on something like this reporting disruptive OP's for global blocks could be possible - but someone would need to want to work on it. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:23, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We would need a CheckUser-level bot in that case, which is obviously a big no-no. Maybe something like this can be implemented into SuggestedInvestigations? Blanket blocking obvious proxies is still the best way to go, in my opinion. Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 15:05, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For the most part, a TAIV bot would suffice. It isn't useful to check every single edit; focusing on a subset is usually enough (main space edit, that is a bad edit, that is not from a user --> is that temp account on a proxy?) to catch the actual disruptive proxies. The "is a bad edit" part would need to lean on something else that is designed for that. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:39, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The "is a bad edit" part would need to lean on something else that is designed for that: I guess if the user gets blocked in a short amount of time, or potentially leveraging ORES scores or the new RevertRisk system. Also, just because the edits appear good at first glance may not necessarily mean the proxy use isn't abusive. There are also people using throwaway accounts who would be impossible to catch if we restrict the bot to just TAIV info. Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 02:47, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's also been some thought about moving proxy blocking from being done by bots to being done by software: phab:T380917. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:52, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A lesser-known feature of the new IP reputation variables is that one can access them at createaccount, and this can be used to log/block accounts potentially created using proxies. There are some holes with this, but it's definitely ready for a test run. Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 17:02, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Probably runs into the same issues identified by Graham87 above. Many countries around the world have rather shockingly small pools of IPv4s available. And multiple users may entirely unknowingly share them within rather short periods of each other on mobile networks. All it takes is one person to run a proxy off their device or for one device on a network to be compromised and you have an awful lot of collateral. ~2025-41540-19 (talk) 17:10, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that's why we should start with a logging filter first, which can then be used by CheckUsers and other people to check if these accounts are behaving abusively. The more problematic proxies (e.g. VPNGate) can then be hardblocked using another filter to prevent excess collateral. Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 17:13, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Logging is much more reasonable. However, I am extremely hesitant to allow direct filter blocks. Flag for human review? No issue. But setting filters to block directly seems likely to be a cause for all kinds of collateral which is just not worth the benefit. And I say this as someone who has dealt with some really nasty LTAs over the years, including the one you are probably thinking of. ~2025-41540-19 (talk) 17:28, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@ChildrenWillListen, the vast majority of accounts are created and never ever used, for abuse or anything else. This would add a lot of work for the CU team without likely reducing much vandalism. -- asilvering (talk) 20:37, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We're obviously not flagging everything, only a small subset of new accounts created from obvious proxies. We have an existing edit filter that does the same thing for all anonymous users and it gets hit once to a few times a day. Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 20:41, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I was aware of your meaning. -- asilvering (talk) 20:45, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If it still logs too much, we can have a bot that will move the users who had the filter triggered to a dashboard or similar when they make their first edit. Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 23:23, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There is 100% going to be too many logs. Proxies come in varying shapes and sizes and legalities, some clearly demarcate their IPs, for others, the only evidence is "Cloudflare ran their magic and said so 2 months ago", as a result, there are significant false-positives and as such a fair bit of collateral damage. Besides that, I worry that if we start aggressively blocking proxies, the vandals will just move to more harder to detect, sketchy, legally grey residential IP-based proxies to perform vandal edits. Sohom (talk) 15:42, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That bot blocked a lot of ranges unnecessarily. A bot that only blocked, say, VPNGate or something, I could get behind, but it's my sense that ST47's bot blocked a lot of ranges that no one was using abusively. We also do already have a list of probable proxies for admins to look at and block after checking for false positives. It's backlogged to hell, because there aren't many admins who make proxy blocks and we'd rather be doing something that actually stops ongoing disruption, rather than maybe-possibly-future disruption. -- asilvering (talk) 20:44, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yup. As someone who used to do these blocks & handle the appeal/exemption requests, the balance between abuse level and impact to normal users just isn't worth it for most of what ST47ProxyBot blocked, or for most of what User:AntiCompositeBot/ASNBlock lists. AntiCompositeNumber (they/them) (talk) 21:50, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes when I middle-click on a notification, I get taken to the page the new comment was made on, but the "this is the comment you are looking for" highlighting causes the comment text to be completely unreadable by making the text and background the same dark blue color. This seems to be reproducible when going to e.g. [4] with dark mode already enabled. -- Beland (talk) 23:31, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for sharing the link where the problem can be reproduced. Looks like this is the same problem as T371695 Reply highlighting is incompatible with skin-invert class in dark mode. Matma Rex talk 01:08, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've subscribed to that bug; thanks for the pointer! Based on the comments there, it looks like the colorization used by {{initiated}} is what's triggering it in this case. 8( -- Beland (talk) 02:17, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings. I have a proposal for a template for use in articles that would be based on a gadget. If I'm not mistaken, this would have to be a JavaScript gadget rather than a Lua module as it requires user input. Apologies if I'm in the wrong place.

The issue I want to solve is this: when there is a series of e.g. chronological information to be conveyed visually, the best current solution is to use an animated image. For example, see the animation of a chess game on Kasparov versus the World or the chronological map on Slave states and free states. Animated images can only present information at the rate of the frames in the image; it is inconvenient or inaccessible for readers who would prefer a different rate.

This could be solved using a template that has back and forth buttons (and/or a slider) to scroll through multiple still images. There is already one template that does a more specialized version of this: Template:Owidslider is designed to convey information from Our World in Data, and is designed for hoverable SVG maps that are listed in the template data. My proposal is for a similar template that would instead allow any image files, which could be inputted as parameters.

I have never coded a MediaWiki gadget before, so I would like some help in creating this. I would also like suggestions about how to implement it. — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 06:55, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Vigilantcosmicpenguin: {{Switcher}} uses MediaWiki:Gadget-switcher.js to make a list of labeled buttons for switching between selected content, usually images. It's not very practical to go sequentially through a long list of images. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:00, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This can be done with MediaWiki:Gadget-calculator.js; doesn't require a new gadget. For the chessboard use case in particular, @Bawolff has done some experiments which I think almost reached a production-ready state. (I also did some experiments, but I forget what state I left it in.) – SD0001 (talk) 13:53, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, thanks. Glad to see that someone is already working on this. I might fork that gadget to create a version that works with images, like in the case of the chronological map. Thanks Bawolff! — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 19:15, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, glad its useful. Module:Sandbox/Bawolff/Chessboard is mostly in my userspace as nobody seemed that interested in using it in articles, but happy to move to template space if there is interest in using. Bawolff (talk) 22:22, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For anyone else unfamiliar with the history: a gadget has existed for a long time (it's deployed on Hebrew Wikipedia and I believe Russian Wikipedia) and consensus was reached in 2019 to deploy it, but the interface admins disagreed with changing the site-wide Javascript file to add a hook for on-demand loading. The gadget's author went on to pursue the approach that had been recommended: creating an extension. But getting an extension deployed is very difficult. Now that the base MediaWiki software supports on-demand loading, the existing gadget could be deployed. However, it's understandable if the gadget's author is a bit burnt out from having tried for so long to get a gadget and then an extension deployed. isaacl (talk) 23:45, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It really is a sad case about the chessbrowswer extension. They did literally everything right, the extension is beautiful, had induvidual wmf staff buy-in, and yet it was still rejected. Part of my goals with the calculator gadget was to make something generic enough that it could be used for a variety of things without asking permission each time. Bawolff (talk) 00:16, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If I'm understanding correctly, it's not that the calculator gadget literally can also provide slideshow functionality. However the somewhat inaptly named mw:Template gadgets feature can be used to load a gadget only for pages with a specific category (typically added by a template), which is how the calculator gadget is loaded. This should make it easier to get new gadgets approved. isaacl (talk) 23:33, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Having looked at the sandbox module after Bawolff's response to my comment regarding history, I stand corrected: although I don't understand the mechanism, it is using the calculator gadget as a front end to create buttons that trigger changes to the display. isaacl (talk) 01:49, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) @Vigilantcosmicpenguin, Module:Sandbox/Bawolff/Chessboard seems to do what you want. — Qwerfjkltalk 13:54, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And we at Wiki Project Med Foundation are happy to fund User:Bawolff to make further improvements to the calculator tool if needed. We improved the generic image slider for CT scans at Appendicitis#Diagnosis. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:31, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Vigilantcosmicpenguin:: So this is what is available currently with {{Calculator}}: For Chess. {{chess viewer|pgn=1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. Bb5+ Bd7 4. Bxd7+ Qxd7 5. c4 Nc6 6. Nc3 Nf6 7. O-O g6 8. d4 cxd4 9. Nxd4 Bg7 10. Nde2 Qe6 11. Nd5 Qxe4 12. Nc7+ Kd7 13. Nxa8 Qxc4 14. Nb6+ axb6 15. Nc3 Ra8 16. a4 Ne4 17. Nxe4 Qxe4 18. Qb3 f5 19. Bg5 Qb4 20. Qf7 Be5 21. h3 Rxa4 22. Rxa4 Qxa4 23. Qxh7 Bxb2 24. Qxg6 Qe4 25. Qf7 Bd4 26. Qb3 f4 27. Qf7 Be5 28. h4 b5 29. h5 Qc4 30. Qf5+ Qe6 31. Qxe6+ Kxe6 32. g3 fxg3 33. fxg3 b4 34. Bf4 Bd4+ 35. Kh1 b3 36. g4 Kd5 37. g5 e6 38. h6 Ne7 39. Rd1 e5 40. Be3 Kc4 41. Bxd4 exd4 42. Kg2 b2 43. Kf3 Kc3 44. h7 Ng6 45. Ke4 Kc2 46. Rh1 d3 47. Kf5 b1=Q 48. Rxb1 Kxb1 49. Kxg6 d2 50. h8=Q d1=Q 51. Qh7 b5 52. Kf6+ Kb2 53. Qh2+ Ka1 54. Qf4 b4 55. Qxb4 Qf3+ 56. Kg7 d5 57. Qd4+ Kb1 58. g6 Qe4 59. Qg1+ Kb2 60. Qf2+ Kc1 61. Kf6 d4 62. g7 1-0}} makes:

← ☯ ▶ →10

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

For the animated GIF about slave states. Option 1 with arrows:

{{Spatial image viewer
|images=
    United_States_1789-03-1789-08.png
    United_States_1800-07-04-1800-07-10.png
    United_States_1821-07-1821-08.png
    United_States_1837-01-1837-03.png
    United_States_1845-03-1845-12.png
    United_States_1846-12-1848-02.png
    United_States_1858-1859.png
    United_States_1861-01-1861-02-04.png
|fallbackImage=File:US Slave Free 1789-1861.gif
|caption=How free/slave status of U.S. states and territories evolved over time between 1789–1861.
}}

Skip image slideshow

←←

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

File:File:US Slave Free 1789-1861.gif

→→

How free/slave status of U.S. states and territories evolved over time between 1789–1861.

00

Another option with a slider (This is currently in my userspace, but I can move it to template space if people are interested in using it):

Skip image slideshow

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

File:File:US Slave Free 1789-1861.gif

0

How free/slave status of U.S. states and territories evolved over time between 1789–1861.

Do those cover what you are looking for? Let me know what you think. Bawolff (talk) 08:50, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I note that all of those chess piece images are multi-licensed as GPL / GFDL / BSD / CC BY-SA, all of which require the link to the file description page for author attribution and notice of the license. If you're not going to link them, you should use CC0 or public domain images instead (or decide those are c:Template:PD-ineligible of some sort and update Commons accordingly). See MOS:BLANKALT and MOS:EMPTYALT for details. Anomie⚔ 14:19, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's a good point, however this also seems to be an existing problem with most chess articles as they largely use {{Chess diagram}} (which i copied) which doesn't link. Bawolff (talk) 14:50, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

These templates both work quite well. I think I'll try creating a template that combines both, so there's an option to include both the arrows and the slider, and adds a pause/play button. — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 21:30, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I open en.wiki about two days ago and found my display had changed from Monobook to, well, something else. It is sparce and filled with whitespace. As the menus all changed, I fumbled around until I found a setting and changed it back to Monospace, but this keeps "going away" and here I am. Any suggestions? Maury Markowitz (talk) 12:32, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's a link at the bottom of every page that you can use to switch between desktop and mobile version: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?mobileaction=toggle_view_desktop Ponor (talk) 12:39, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, the link in question is called "desktop" which is not entirely obvious, I have never clicked it, and is so far down I don't think I've ever seen it. Thanks though, I'll know what to do next time. Maury Markowitz (talk) 18:16, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Maury Markowitz I agree. The message in question, MediaWiki:Mobile-frontend-view-desktop, should be changed to "Desktop view", since MediaWiki:Mobile-frontend-view is already "Mobile view". Only a WP:SYSOP can do that. Ponor (talk) 12:24, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For some reason, T301045 (from 2022) to make this fix has not been acted upon. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:08, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Phabricator tasks fall through the cracks way too easily. We all know this, but can't fix it. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 03:37, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all and thanks in advance. Template:Infobox officeholder is generating bogus output at this sandbox.

She is on City Council, so I wrote | office1 = Member of the [[City Council of Kansas City, Missouri]] | district1 = 5th district but the infobox renders it as Member of the City Council of Kansas City, Missouri Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 's 5th district district. She never had anything to do with federal government.

Am I correct that this is a known issue where this output is triggered by the presence of "district=" so that my only option is to replace it with | office1 = Member of the [[City Council of Kansas City, Missouri]]<br />from the 5th district? Thanks! — Smuckola(talk) 23:48, 19 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Smuckola: Yes, the district parameters can only be used for certain legislatures. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:44, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The above page (which is on the main page right now) is currently fully protected, due to being transcluded to multiple cascade-protected pages. I don't think this is normal, given that even today's featured article is only semi-protected. Am I at the right place to report this? Chess enjoyer (talk) 10:30, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Chess enjoyer: Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/December 20 said {{MV|Doña Paz}}. This causes a transclusion of the target page which becomes cascade-protected so I have omitted the template.[5] PrimeHunter (talk) 13:23, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That fixed it. Thanks! Chess enjoyer (talk) 13:36, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

[6] DougWeller (talk) 11:44, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Could be because it's set to only show changes in Article and Talk namespaces; try this [7]. Also, could it be because you're on @DougWeller instead of User:Doug Weller? — DVRTed (Talk) 11:57, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that would be it but I can't seem to create one under my proper usename. DougWeller (talk) 12:04, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Damn, still posting under the wrong name! Doug Weller talk 13:30, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On Safari l which I’m using now on my iPad it’s fine. On Firefox on my pc, it’s empty. Doug Weller talk 13:34, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Even odder, when I'm on my user:Doug Weller page, eup at the top right it says DougWeller, an alternate account I don't use. And I'm struggling to post as Doug Weller. A Firefox issue? Safaris is ok. DougWeller (talk) 16:05, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The edit you just made was from User:DougWeller, not User:Doug Weller. In whichever browser you used to make that edit, you may want to log out and log back in, being careful to use the correct account. Anomie⚔ 16:41, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Logout from both or just DougWeller? And I am for some reason finding logging in not easy. Somehow I keep losing my password which should not happen with RoboForm, I need to fix that. Doug Weller talk 16:55, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. Not sure how but thanks everyone. Doug Weller talk 17:40, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I posted on this before but was waiting to see if something changed- for some reason I have to verify my email address, but when I ask for a confirmation email and click it, it says the confirmation email is invalid/expired even though I did it almost immediately. Any thoughts or somewhere I could get assistance? 331dot (talk) 20:30, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind, I removed my email address and then readded it, that seems to have fixed it. 331dot (talk) 20:44, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If your email provider scans incoming emails and follows the links in them for any reason, it may invalidate the links before you get a chance to do it (they can be used only once). Matma Rex talk 02:17, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Substitutable template {{Welcome-retro}} safely substitutes template {{Am your mentor}} using the {{safesubst:<noinclude /> method. However, when I go to Pages that link to "Template:Am your mentor" the results do not include Welcome-retro, and I don't understand why not. Should I be using the {{ {{{|safesubst:}}} method instead, or is something else going on? I've never really understood the difference between the two subst methods; is it documented somewhere? The second one kind of looks like the default value of a non-existent template param, so I don't get that one; at least the first one makes sense to me. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 06:00, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathglot: They're not really substitution methods but ugly tricks to prevent the substitution from happening as soon as you save the template. Your template code would be much more readable if you put it within <includeonly>...</includeonly> and forgot about the tricks:

<includeonly>...{{safesubst:some template}}...</includeonly>

As for the "What links here" question: because {{#mentor:{{BASEPAGENAME}}}} on the template page returns nothing, the branch calling {{am your mentor}} does not get executed. Change this to {{#mentor:Mathglot}} and Welcome-retro will link to Am your mentor.

You can play with these here: testwiki:Template:Am your mentor & testwiki:Template:Welcome-retro Ponor (talk) 09:15, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I had no idea, thanks for this! And for kick-starting testing via the test-wiki examples. Plus, I love anything that results in cleaner code, which this clearly does. I think this ratchets my understanding of substitution up a notch. Much appreciated! Mathglot (talk) 09:35, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

After you move a page, there's a notice box which tells you to clean up after your move.

I think it would be wise to add an item to that box noting that if your move was to draftify an article then you should add {{db-r2}} to the leftover redirect. I assume this notice is located at a template somewhere, but I don't know how to find it in order to make the change. Athanelar (talk) 11:56, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Athanelar: The message is made by MediaWiki:Movepage-moved which can only be edited by administrators. It's a rare type of move and I don't think we should always display such an instruction. The parameters are documented at translatewiki:MediaWiki:Movepage-moved/qqq. It should be able to detect a move out of mainspace. The suggested message should probably be there no matter which namespace you move to. Administrators and page movers can move without leaving a redirect. Some things are delayed so I don't know whether the message can use #ifexist to test whether the old name still exists. MediaWiki:Movepage-moved-redirect is only displayed if a redirect was left behind but that message does not have access to the page names so it cannot detect a move out of mainspace. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:18, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, how do I fix dark mode in Infobox legislative election, thanks? Rafael Ronen 13:06, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Rafael Ronen I would advice reading Recommendations for night mode compatibility on Wikimedia wikis. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:21, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is it intended behavior for description lists to end when any other list is nested inside the <dd>? E.g. this markup:

;1
:*2
:*3
:*4
;5
:6

will produce the following HTML:

<dl><dt>1</dt>
<dd>
<ul><li>2</li>
<li>3</li>
<li>4</li></ul></dd></dl>
<dl><dt>5</dt>
<dd>6</dd></dl>

which is obviously wrong and should have been

<dl><dt>1</dt>
<dd>
<ul><li>2</li>
<li>3</li>
<li>4</li></ul></dd>
<dt>5</dt>
<dd>6</dd></dl>

Is there any phabricator ticket about this quirk? I will also note that it isn't present in Parsoid. sapphaline (talk) 16:03, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not intended, as far as I know. I don't see a Phabricator task for it in some quick searches. I note you can work around it by including an extra data (colon) line before the term (semicolon) line, like this:

;1
:*2
:*3
:*4
:
;5
:6

Anomie⚔ 20:33, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

phab:T223277 Izno (talk) 00:16, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hey All we have built tech that allows the determination of video and audio plays.[8]

It is currently live on Basque Wikipedia.

To activate here for all users we just need to add text like this to MediaWiki:Common.js. This was a request from the Wishlist. Let me know your thoughts / further requirements before something like this is implemented. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:21, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In favor, but as a gadget. Hopefully it will move Wmf to implement it as a core analytics function. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:36, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why as a gadget? But yes we are working on convincing the WMF to implement this as a core analytic function, but will not see progress until the new year. Testing the EN communities desire / concerns around this. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:55, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Basque Wikipedia does use audiovisual media much more than we do, for example see eu:Olentzero. eu:Atari:Hezkuntza/Ikusgela has more info on how this works. Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 21:04, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Why as a gadget?" because gadgets are more efficient than loading a script via a separate request. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:07, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have a few reservations regarding the proposed video tracking script:

1. We are not a platform where creators monetize views. What do we get from knowing all these stats, what difference does it make knowing if someone's video was played for 28 or 46 seconds?
2. The proposal is to load this script on every page for every user, but only for desktop users. If the stats will lead to anything actionable, you'll be missing stats from 2/3 of our readers.
3. There's already so much scripting going on that any action on a newly opened page on this site takes a few seconds. I keep hitting the wrong links and buttons until the interface settles down. I'm questioning whether yet another script is really (really) necessary, no matter how short. I'd work with WMF to have this embedded in the player itself, *IF* we find it useful, actionable.

Ponor (talk) 21:36, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe we can only load the script on pages that include videos, And should work on desktop aswell... will look into that.

The usefulness of this is 1) there are some questions around if folks watch videos on WP and should we invest more into video creation such as VideoWiki, and the efforts you point out at Basque WP. 2) when we partner with other organizations they are curious if the material they have donated under an open license is watched.

With respect to duration of video watched, one question is how long should Wikipedia based videos be? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:22, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Yaron Koren: See below. Thanks, Polygnotus (talk) 23:37, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Doc James Neither of these 2 reasons listed are a compelling reason to add this script to MediaWiki:Common.js.

And this script is pretty terrible (e.g. there is no CSRF token or authentication, so faking data is trivial).

For some reason beyond my understanding this file suddenly has 420 total duration and 69 seconds played.... [9] It wasn't me.

GitLab here, JS here.

There are also memory leak possibilities, finger printing possibilities, global namespace pollution, no error handling, no user consent mechanism, SQL injection vulnerability, XSS, faking the user agent...

Should I stop here ? Polygnotus (talk) 23:26, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Polygnotus, we will work on fixing those issues. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:12, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Doc James But even if you do, its still not a good idea. The fact that Wikipedia logs as little as possible is a feature not a bug.

If you want to continue on this path you need to articulate how this would benefit Wikipedia(ns). And I don't think what you have currently provided are good reasons.

there are some questions around if folks watch videos on WP and should we invest more into video creation such as VideoWiki, and the efforts you point out at Basque WP. No, we should not. People watch video on youtube. They read text here. Videos are fundamentally incompatible without our strength: collaborative editing.

when we partner with other organizations they are curious if the material they have donated under an open license is watched. The contacts at partner organizations do not have the kind of technical knowledge required to interpret such statistics in a meaningful way (which is of course pretty rare). The idea that such a dashboard would lead to measurably more contributions is incorrect. Polygnotus (talk) 00:19, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes some folks here are against video. Video can be collaboratively editable by the way, and we have developed software that makes that the case already. We log pageviews, logging video or audio plays is not really that different. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:26, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Doc James I am not against video, and I doubt anyone is, it is part of my sensory experience .

Video can be collaboratively editable by the way, and we have developed software that makes that the case already Not in a way that is comparable to text. I have seen what you are referring to and it also is a bad idea. Note that this is not what people actually want to do; a collaboratively edited video website would die out quickly from lack of interest. And no one wants to watch such videos in an age where an AI model could generate something superior.

We log pageviews, logging video or audio plays is not really that different. The amount of logging that is done is basically the minimum that is required. Going beyond that is a terrible idea.

Note that the person who is responsible for the code I saw is unable to fix the problems I pointed out; if they were then the code wouldn't have those problems. Polygnotus (talk) 03:09, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

With respect to your claim "no one wants to watch such videos", would be useful to have data to support this position... thus this effort would be useful. EU WP is seeing a fair number of video plays. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:16, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Meh, disagree. It would be useful if there was significant doubt that that claim is incorrect. But since there isn't... The pageview data and file history can already be used to show that there are actually very few video plays of those collaboratively generated videos.

But, like I said, most people do not have the kind of technical knowledge required to interpret such statistics in a meaningful way (which is of course pretty rare). Most people aren't interested in learning about how to interpret website analytics data.

And I don't really know how the fact that we know that people played "9 Reasons Why I HATE Having Big Boobs.webm" for 111 seconds in the past 30 days is helpful to us. Polygnotus (talk) 03:32, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

How do you get video play data from "pageview data and file history"? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:51, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You don't. But if the page that the video is on has few views then it is not super likely that the video itself has a trillion. And if a collaborative video editing wikipedia would be a good idea you'd see a bunch of people collaborating on creating videos with an endresult that is worth watching. Polygnotus (talk) 03:57, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Doc James I think this is a bad idea, even if the code was less bad, but you also really undermine your own proposal by saying "we just need to add text like this to MediaWiki:Common.js". We can't import a script from that guys WP:USERSPACE into MediaWiki:Common.js because that would mean that if I hack that guy I can do all sorts of horrible things. Polygnotus (talk) 23:17, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some smaller wikis already do this, see fa:مدیاویکی:TofawikiInstaller.js, which injects a random user-generated script on enwiki if you ever accidentally run it or click a link that autoloads it (example). Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 23:37, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@ChildrenWillListen Please contact security wikimedia.org Thanks, Polygnotus (talk) 23:40, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is already discussed at fa:بحث مدیاویکی:Tofawiki.js. It seems they don't care. What happens is that the script would install "fa:MediaWiki:Tofawiki.js" to your enwiki common.js file through the ForeignApi, and that script imports en:User:Ebrahim/ArticleTranslator.js, which resides in enwiki. Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 23:43, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wtf? Why would another wiki install whatever that is into a user's common.js on enwiki? Mind you, the installer is in the MediaWiki namespace too. That's terrible. I've added the wiki to my blocklist so I don't accidentally stumble there. — DVRTed (Talk) 00:07, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

According to [10], more than 2000 people have it installed. As for whether they wanted that installed, who knows? Courtesy ping to @Ebrahim. Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 02:13, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, script would need to be moved to a place only interface admins can edit. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:24, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Doc James Can you explain how this would benefit Wikipedia(ns)? Thanks, Polygnotus (talk) 03:11, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose the entire idea of running custom JavaScript to track users - that's contrary to the very idea what Wikimedia is supposed to be. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:14, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Anonymous analytics isn't the same as tracking users. WMF does it all the time. – SD0001 (talk) 19:45, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I keep making edits like this, to remove a lot of :::::::::::::::::::::::::heavily indentation. This seems to be more common in recent years, as the Reply tool makes it very easy to just keep replying without realizing how many replies are in a row. Is there a script or bot that can do that automagically? i was thinking of something like Citation bot, which can be triggered to run on a particular page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:19, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing That is a pretty good idea. Perhaps not for a bot but please post on Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests. Polygnotus (talk) 01:21, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't make it *too* automatic, as although I love outdent in certain situations and use it (with the positional param to get the hook ends to line up correctly), outdent also breaks the ability to replying to anyone several replies prior to the outdent with even a modest number of tab stops and figure out who you are replying to by vertical alignment +1 in the reply. Mathglot (talk) 07:36, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"also breaks the ability to replying to anyone several replies prior to the outdent" - you can always reply at the top, e.g. ::::::::::::Message. [[User:User1|User1]] ([[User talk:User1|talk]]) 07:36, 22 December 2025 (UTC) :::::::::::::Message. [[User:User2|User2]] ([[User talk:User2|talk]]) 07:37, 22 December 2025 (UTC) ::::::::::::::Message. [[User:User5|User5]] ([[User talk:User5|talk]]) 07:40, 22 December 2025 (UTC) ::::::::::::::Message. [[User:User3|User3]] ([[User talk:User3|talk]]) 07:38, 22 December 2025 (UTC) :{{outdent|13}}Message. [[User:User4|User4]] ([[User talk:User4|talk]]) 07:39, 22 December 2025 (UTC) sapphaline (talk) 10:25, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Btw, you should outdent inside the list, not outside. sapphaline (talk) 10:25, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am talking about replies to comments made before the outdent; let's say, at comments at tab stop 4, where the outdent happened at tab stop 7, and the reply to the early comment happened after the outdent. There is no obvious place to put it, except at the bottom, but not at outdent 5, as that could be misconstrued as a reply to the commenter at indent level 4 *after* the outdent. You have to include the timestamp of the comment you are replying to, to disambiguate it. Mathglot (talk) 10:34, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What is the difference between style="text-align: center;" and align="center"? Eurohunter (talk) 21:21, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Eurohunter: align= is obsolete in HTML5 and should be avoided. See more at Wikipedia:HTML5. Most or all browsers still support it because it's common but maybe not forever. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:29, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@PrimeHunter: align="center" is less code than style="text-align: center;", so why is this so? Eurohunter (talk) 21:39, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Eurohunter: HTML5 is an Internet standard, not a Wikipedia thing. Google found https://prepbytes.com/blog/html-align-attribute/ which says: "With the release of HTML5, many deprecated attributes, including the "align" attribute, were officially removed from the specification. The rationale behind this decision was to promote the use of more modern and flexible methods for controlling alignment and layout on webpages." This for example means that other features may override styles like style="text-align: center;". You can put a shitload of stuff in a style= and modify it from other places. Often there is already a style="..." and you only have to insert text-align: center; so the code size difference may also be limited in practice. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:59, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Separation of content and presentation is why. Nardog (talk) 03:49, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Undid X revisions (starting with revision number 12345 and ending with revision number 67890)" - when did this start happening (I have been on vacation for 3 days), why, and can I turn it off without manually overwriting the edit summary? GiantSnowman 21:51, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@GiantSnowman: MediaWiki:Undo-summary-multiple was created 13 December with edit summary "to match MediaWiki:Undo-summary. a patch for this will deploy next week. phab:T157524". It cannot be turned off. I suppose a user script could look for it and automatically remove it from the edit summary field but I'm not making it. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:05, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, thanks! GiantSnowman 22:07, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Probably Thursday, due to gerrit:1052359. There doesn't appear to be a way to individually turn it off, short of having a user script to overwrite the summary on the edit page. You might try Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests for that if you don't know how to write a script on your own. Anomie⚔ 22:08, 21 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've proposed gerrit:1220364 to simplify the wording. – SD0001 (talk) 15:54, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The {{Hatnote}} template with the parameter selfref=yes adds the CSS class selfref to the hatnote, whereas the {{Self-reference}} template adds the CSS class selfreference. The purpose of this is to tell third parties reusing exported Wikipedia articles that they might want to skip these self-references, so it seems strange not to have one standard class for this. Does anyone know why these templates add two different CSS classes for the same thing? Is this a bug, or are they somehow handled differently? – McDutchie (talk) 04:23, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@McDutchie "The purpose of this is to tell third parties" which 3rd parties ? I don't think this is a thing. It MIGHT work in some situations, but none of this is standardized. I think for most parties, they will not look at something like this. At most they will know the hatnote class. It's more for us to keep track of which hatanotes are selferences in my opinion. I do agree, that one and the same class should be used. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:02, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I was curious about this but I haven't found any. I know you can easily go on someone's contribs page to find their edit count, but I think having a separate template/module for edge cases wouldn't be a bad idea. -- Trar (talk) 16:09, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No. (Other than {{Adminstats}} for admins who use that system). * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:11, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you enable Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups in your preferences, you'll see an editor's edit count whenever you hover your mouse over a link to their user page or user talk page. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:17, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The gadget called "XTools: dynamically show statistics about a page's history under the page heading" is also useful when looking at User pages, which are usually created by the eponymous editor. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:34, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And there's also this new kid in town called User Info. You'll see it as Ponor (talk) 22:37, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki message delivery 21:42, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]