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Proposal for finding longstanding bad articles
Thomas Ranch is about to be deleted, having existed in Wikipedia for over fifteen years without a single inline reference, and without ever having an external link to an independent source. Grub Smith, though a bit longer, has been in a similar state for an equally long time. I happened to come across these two not while searching for suspect articles but while doing general cleanup around the given name Thomas and the surname Smith. How many more articles are out there in this condition? I propose that the best way to find out, if technically feasible, would be to generate a list of articles that have never had an inline ref tag over the course of their existence, sorted by age, and push through them from the oldest on forward. If someone has the Wiki-fu to generate such a list, please have at it. BD2412 T 00:20, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- Never over the course of their existence is probably a tall order, but WP:RAQ is probably a better first stop. Izno (talk) 01:51, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- BD2412, I seem to remember that the database replicas only include metadata, not the actual page contents. To get the contents, you need to go through the API (which is much slower). Somebody needs to check me on that. Just as a proof-of-concept, I wrote a trivial little python script that iterates over all pages in mainspace and searches for <ref> anywhere in the text. It's processing about 10 pages/second. We've got about 6 million articles (from WP:STATS, which I assume is talking about mainspace when it says, "6,281,819 articles"). So, we could scan every mainspace article in about a week. One could envision doing that. I'm guessing the number of revisions is 2 orders of magnitude higher, so searching every revision of every article would likely be prohibitive. First guess, a couple of years. I'm not sure what value it would add anyway. -- RoySmith (talk) 02:49, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- We could cut that down significantly by first removing from the search every article that has a ref tag right now (which should be a substantial majority), and of those that remain, only searching articles created before, say, 2007. The value would just be clearing out old garbage. BD2412 T 03:00, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- An database scan should work. I tried searching for an ref tag on a lot smaller wiki than enwiki and it seems to work. Queries would not work, because they are not logged in an sql table.--Snaevar (talk) 08:00, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- Snaevar, What query did you perform? Can you link to a Quarry page? -- RoySmith (talk) 14:02, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- They're likely talking about database dumps. Quarry won't work as you say – it doesn't have page texts. Pinging HaeB who I think can comment on the feasibility of processing the dumps for this task. – SD0001 (talk) 16:55, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- I did an database scan using AWB, on an small wiki and I simply searched the main namespace for pages who do not have <ref>. That kind of search is done offline. The dump file contained all pages with the most current version only (pages-meta-current in the filename). The dump file was downloaded from dumps.wikimedia.org.--Snaevar (talk) 19:33, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- As noted in the WP:RAQ discussion, inquiries can further be narrowed to articles categorized in the Category:Companies category tree, or articles categorized in Category:Living people. That's where these sorts of problems appear most likely to arise. BD2412 T 15:15, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- Snaevar, What query did you perform? Can you link to a Quarry page? -- RoySmith (talk) 14:02, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- @BD2412: why not begin with something like Category:Articles lacking sources from December 2006? For companies specifically use something like Cleanup listing for WikiProject Business (currently does not exist for WikiProject Companies but you can request one). – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:17, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- Neither of the articles noted above were so tagged, perhaps because they have external links (even though these link to sites unusable as sources). I am looking for things that have really slipped through the cracks. BD2412 T 16:20, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- Sure, BD2412, but if some type of action is needed on articles with these specific problems, it would make sense to start with the ones that have already been identified. But I get your point. I sometimes run across low-traffic articles with obvious problems that have slipped through the cracks as well and tag them. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:24, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- Neither of the articles noted above were so tagged, perhaps because they have external links (even though these link to sites unusable as sources). I am looking for things that have really slipped through the cracks. BD2412 T 16:20, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
- Well, I spun up a VPS instance. Performance is hugely better than on Toolforge; I was able to scan 994,949 pages in just under 6 minutes! I'm not sure if this is what you had in mind, but I found all pages in Category:Living people that did not have
</ref>
anywhere in the text. Only found 7 pages:
Does this seem plausible? -- RoySmith (talk) 02:27, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- BTW, https://github.com/roysmith/bad-articles -- RoySmith (talk) 02:31, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- @RoySmith
scan 994,949 pages in just under 6 minutes
using API or dumps? Either way, wow!
The latter sounds implausible though as there's a list of unreferenced BLPs at User:SDZeroBot/Unreferenced_BLPs - it's a lot more than 7. Or did you mean pages that already don't have an unsourced tag? – SD0001 (talk) 20:27, 8 April 2021 (UTC)- SD0001, Through the API. This is running inside a WMF data center, so I assume it's got a lot more bandwidth to the API servers than you or I would from a remote machine. Yeah, it seemed amazing, which is why I was looking for confirmation that it made sense. Clearly something isn't right, I'll dig more. -- RoySmith (talk) 20:55, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
- Oh, my. Apparently I flunked Programming 101, as well as playing hookey during both semesters of Software Engineering 101 where they introduced the concept of testing one's code before publishing it, compounded by writing code past one's bedtime and further exacerbated by failing to perform even the most rudimentary sanity checks.
- I've got a new version now. It should process articles at about 0.01% of the speed of the original, but with the offsetting advantage of actually doing something useful. It finds, for example Odalys Adams, which makes up for the lack of references by having 22 categories. It was on track to finish in about 24 hours, but I killed it to avoid beating up on the servers too much. I'm working on getting access to the dump files and I'll switch to using those once that's done. -- RoySmith (talk) 21:26, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
- SD0001, Through the API. This is running inside a WMF data center, so I assume it's got a lot more bandwidth to the API servers than you or I would from a remote machine. Yeah, it seemed amazing, which is why I was looking for confirmation that it made sense. Clearly something isn't right, I'll dig more. -- RoySmith (talk) 20:55, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
Has an enwiki search with -insource:"<ref"
been mentioned? The results include XXX (a disambiguation page) and Hitler Youth (has heaps of references using {{sfn}} but no <ref>
tags). To limit the search to a category, use incategory:"Living people" -insource:"<ref"
Johnuniq (talk) 00:33, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
- Timeout at 200k but I skimmed some and most did not have inline ref on the page in question. Izno (talk) 00:47, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
- Johnuniq, Can you actually search for "<ref", with the leading punctuation? I thought all punctuation was ignored by the search indexer. -- RoySmith (talk) 02:17, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
- You are correct—from Help:Searching#insource:, "non-alphanumeric characters are ignored". I'm a newbie at searching and started with
insource:/regexp/
(slashes instead of quotes) and (I believe) that does allow punctuation following regex rules. However the regexp timed out so I switched to quotes without much thought. At any rate, my point was that dab pages need to be ignored (which happens automatically if using Category:Living people) and that some found pages may have no ref tags yet still be good because they use one of the new-fangled referencing methods. Johnuniq (talk) 03:06, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
- You are correct—from Help:Searching#insource:, "non-alphanumeric characters are ignored". I'm a newbie at searching and started with
- @BD2412: I just got access to the dump files, so I took another whack at this. This is not by any stretch of the imagination production-quality code, but here's the script I ran. The heuristics it uses for detecting what's a BLP, what's a redirect, what's a reference, etc are quite crude. I haven't done any performance measurements, but my gut feeling is most of the time was just plain I/O, decompressing the bzip stream, and parsing the XML, so adding more sophisticated checks wouldn't slow things down appreciably. This was done with a brute-force single-threaded process. If we wanted to turn this into a production tool that was run on a regular schedule, I could easily see 1-2 orders of magnitude speedup.
- This was run against the enwiki-20210320-pages-articles.xml.bz2 dump file (only current revisions). It looked at approximately 21 million pages (all namespaces), of which just shy of 1 million appeared to be BLPs, and found 43,399 pages in about 5.8 hours. It produced this list. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:11, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- @BD2412: is this what you were looking for? -- RoySmith (talk) 13:55, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- I'm not sure how to read that, honestly. The output I'm looking for is very old articles (BLP's being a priority among them) that have never been sourced. BD2412 T 16:02, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- It's a list of article titles that are probably BLPs and probably have no refs in their current revision. (Though without looking at the source I can't imagine how M would be in either of those groups. Why not just look for Category:Living people and absence of <ref> in the wikitext?) Is it any more useful when the page age is added, as at quarry:query/54124? —Cryptic 16:54, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- Cryptic, Wow, I have no idea how M found its way in there. I'll work on figuring that out, thanks for spotting it.
- As for looking for "<ref>", the problem was that some articles have things like "< ref >" in them (really, I've seen that). Just looking for "ref" seemed like a reasonable first pass that could be done quickly. I was thinking that if this at least got us close, I could do a second pass with something that actually parsed the wikitext. Similarly for "Category:Living people" vs "Category: Living people" (space vs no space after the colon).
- I'm also thinking once we've got a definitive list of current versions that have no references, then we could delve into the history of each article. But at least start with the current versions and get that right. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:13, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- Well, I've figured out where M came from. It turns out that in the XML dumps, something like:
- <title>Heckler & Koch BASR</title>
- generates a title node with multiple child nodes to hold the text. I was just grabbing the first child and assuming I had the full title. The really weird thing is I got different results if I uncompressed the bzip2 stream in line with the XML parsing, or uncompressed it first into a (very large) text file. I guess XML parsers are free to break the text up into smaller chunks or return it as one piece as convenient?
- Life was so much easier when there was no XML, no unicode, and "big data" meant more than one box of cards. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:30, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
- It's a list of article titles that are probably BLPs and probably have no refs in their current revision. (Though without looking at the source I can't imagine how M would be in either of those groups. Why not just look for Category:Living people and absence of <ref> in the wikitext?) Is it any more useful when the page age is added, as at quarry:query/54124? —Cryptic 16:54, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- I'm not sure how to read that, honestly. The output I'm looking for is very old articles (BLP's being a priority among them) that have never been sourced. BD2412 T 16:02, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- @BD2412: is this what you were looking for? -- RoySmith (talk) 13:55, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- This was run against the enwiki-20210320-pages-articles.xml.bz2 dump file (only current revisions). It looked at approximately 21 million pages (all namespaces), of which just shy of 1 million appeared to be BLPs, and found 43,399 pages in about 5.8 hours. It produced this list. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:11, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- BTW, does anybody know how to pin this discussion so it doesn't get archived yet? Or is the archiver smart enough to note that the thread is still active? -- RoySmith (talk) 22:16, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- You need
{{subst:pin section}}
. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:50, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- You need
New plan for RADAR rollout
Since no one wants to be a lab rat, we are changing course for the rollout of my new tool. Registration is no longer be required for use.
Click here to use the tool. (link will begin working shortly)Sorry for the bad link. The actual link will be up next Tuesday.
- Click here for instructional videos.
Be sure to save the links so you don't lose them. Sam at Megaputer (talk) 16:32, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- So what exactly is this tool? EGGIDICAE🥚 18:50, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- The tool does several things, but the main feature I am proud of it that it detects promotional articles. Or at least it will, once our IT guy get the link working (haha). So I've run a customized sentiment analysis on all articles about companies and schools to derive a promo score, which we can use to rank them from most to least promotional. I've also pulled in all of the promo tags, and monthly page views. Then the idea is that we apply various sorts and filters to discover various types of damaged articled. To give some examples, we can filter down to untagged articles and sort by promo score. The articles at the top of the list are promotional articles without tags, so we tag them. Or we can filter to articles that have POV tags, and then sort by monthly views. If we care about reducing damaged hits, this gives us a priority que for articles in need of cleanup. Sam at Megaputer (talk) 18:59, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- I don't understand why we need a tool hosted off Wiki which presumably will have access to private data for user accounts when we have perfectly good filters that already do this. EGGIDICAE🥚 19:05, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- Well, we can't sort by promo score. And I'm not sure what you mean by access to private data for user accounts. Once the link is working, no account setup will be required. Sam at Megaputer (talk) 19:09, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- Yes, we can. In the same way that ORES and filters already do. EGGIDICAE🥚 19:12, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- I'm not sure that ORES does exactly that. Could you show me what you mean? For example, could you get me a link to all articles on companies that have a notability tag, sorted from most to least promotional? Sam at Megaputer (talk) 19:20, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- MW:ORES. Can you please explain how exactly your tool works, what type of information it would "see" from using it? EGGIDICAE🥚 19:28, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- I'm not sure that ORES does exactly that. Could you show me what you mean? For example, could you get me a link to all articles on companies that have a notability tag, sorted from most to least promotional? Sam at Megaputer (talk) 19:20, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- Yes, we can. In the same way that ORES and filters already do. EGGIDICAE🥚 19:12, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- Well, we can't sort by promo score. And I'm not sure what you mean by access to private data for user accounts. Once the link is working, no account setup will be required. Sam at Megaputer (talk) 19:09, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- I don't understand why we need a tool hosted off Wiki which presumably will have access to private data for user accounts when we have perfectly good filters that already do this. EGGIDICAE🥚 19:05, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- The tool does several things, but the main feature I am proud of it that it detects promotional articles. Or at least it will, once our IT guy get the link working (haha). So I've run a customized sentiment analysis on all articles about companies and schools to derive a promo score, which we can use to rank them from most to least promotional. I've also pulled in all of the promo tags, and monthly page views. Then the idea is that we apply various sorts and filters to discover various types of damaged articled. To give some examples, we can filter down to untagged articles and sort by promo score. The articles at the top of the list are promotional articles without tags, so we tag them. Or we can filter to articles that have POV tags, and then sort by monthly views. If we care about reducing damaged hits, this gives us a priority que for articles in need of cleanup. Sam at Megaputer (talk) 18:59, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- I make this video series to explain how it works from a user's prospective. If this can be achieved with ORES, It's certainly not obvious how to do it from that documentation. I am planning on opening up the tool for inspection after it has been out for two weeks and we have collected some data on efficacy. Sam at Megaputer (talk) 19:40, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- You still haven't explained what if anything it sees from a data standpoint, which is more important since you're asking people to test it out and promoting it all over the site without any meaningful discussion with the actual community. EGGIDICAE🥚 19:42, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- Are you asking me to explain how it creates the ranking? Sam at Megaputer (talk) 19:47, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- You still haven't explained what if anything it sees from a data standpoint, which is more important since you're asking people to test it out and promoting it all over the site without any meaningful discussion with the actual community. EGGIDICAE🥚 19:42, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- I make this video series to explain how it works from a user's prospective. If this can be achieved with ORES, It's certainly not obvious how to do it from that documentation. I am planning on opening up the tool for inspection after it has been out for two weeks and we have collected some data on efficacy. Sam at Megaputer (talk) 19:40, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- To be honest, this sounds to me like straight-up spam promoting your company's tool, and I'm half-minded to remove the spam you posted - the optics of this are very concerning for me. If it's genuinely not intended to be promotion and is intended to purely for the interests of furthering the project, why not open-source it and host it on wikitech:Toolforge? That way, concerns about leaking the private data of users of this tool can be mitigated through the requirement to follow Toolforge's terms of use as well. While I'm definitely interested in the anti-spam fight, just the way this seems to have been pushed from your end definitely feels like (to me, at least) a bait-and-switch, though I do assume that's not your intention. You also mention you're collecting usage data from this, but I fail to see where you've disclosed your privacy policy detailing exactly what data you will be collecting and storing, and for how long. stwalkerster (talk)
- Oh, that data collection. The data I am collecting is just an analysis of how these Wikipedia articles change over time. We aren't collecting any user data. And this tool was built with a proprietary software framework, so it can't be open-sourced. But it might be possible to create an open-source knock off if it is popular, and I would even be willing to help with that. I'm not sure what you mean by "bait and switch". Sam at Megaputer (talk) 19:56, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- The fact that you do not understand what I am asking about with regard to data is a problem. How do we know what data it is collecting from someone using the tool? How do we know this isn't just scraping IPs? What privacy assurances are there? EGGIDICAE🥚 19:59, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- It's the same as when you visit any website. If I had built this tool to scrape IPs, I would be doing that in a very inefficient way. You are probably wanting to know what Megaputer is trying to get out of this. That is a perfectly reasonable question. My company let me work on this because they are hoping to make the news. As for myself, I am a Wikipedian who wants to help along the project. Sam at Megaputer (talk) 20:02, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- No, I honestly don't care. I want to know what user data this tool is gathering from USERS ACCESSING IT considering you've promoted it all over the place. This isn't a goodness of your heart creation, you even said as much.
My company let me work on this because they are hoping to make the news.
EGGIDICAE🥚 20:07, 6 April 2021 (UTC)- Why would any company do all this work just to steal data from a dozen or so Wikipedians? That makes absolutely no sense. And of course this isn't being done out of the goodness of Megaputer's heart. Megaputer is a company, and companies don't have hearts. I started building this thing during my unpaid internship. Megaputer let me do it because I was unpaid, and they really didn't care what I did as long as I learned the software. Now I am releasing it. Quite frankly, I'd like to see it do some good. Sam at Megaputer (talk) 20:14, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- Again, you're totally missing the point, aside from you spamming on behalf of your company who wants to "get in the news", what a tool used on Wikipedia does with user data does matter whether it's intentionally nefarious or not. That's why Stwalkerster asked about the privacy policy. You're really toeing a line here and you need to stop. Further, just because you've disclosed as a paid editor, doesn't give you free reign to use Wikimedia as a marketing stunt. EGGIDICAE🥚 20:16, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- Here is a link to Megaputer's privacy policy. Sam at Megaputer (talk) 20:20, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- Thank you for the privacy policy link. I've had a look, and I'm disappointed in a number of the vague statements regarding potentially indefinite data retention and the depth of user-identifying information that you appear collect. I will not be using this tool. stwalkerster (talk) 20:43, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- I respect your decision. But please bear in mind that there are many Wikipedians who use Facebook, Twitter, and even Google, all of which are known to violate your privacy in ways that Megaputer never could, even if we wanted to. These Wikipedians will likely not have such an objection to Megaputer's privacy policy. I very much hope that a few of them will give my tool a try. Sam at Megaputer (talk) 20:58, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- The difference is that those are individual choices that have nothing to do with Wikipedia. A tool for Wikipedia is a different matter, especially one that is promoted heavily by someone with a vested interest in that company. I would recommend dropping this given you literally said that it was an attempt to get media coverage. EGGIDICAE🥚 21:13, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Praxidicae When you navigate to an external site by clicking on a link from Wikipedia, they'll be able to know that you've come from Wikipedia, but they can't possibly know what your user account is or any other information related to your account. They'll also get your IP address and user agent string – but that's true of every website you visit on the internet. If you don't agree to that just don't visit their site. No need to make a fuss about it as it spurs technical innovation and discourages future technical contributors from even trying to improve WP. Hosting on Toolforge is good practise but it is certainly not a requirement since it's always up to users whether they want to use the tool or not. – SD0001 (talk) 04:25, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- SD0001 You've completely missed my point. There is a difference between viewing an article, clicking a source. No one is worried about that data scraping. This is someone who was literally paid/hired to write about the company hosting this tool and is creating the tool and promoting it in hopes of getting media attention per their own admission in this thread. Further, it would be very easy to scrape data from accounts using a tool like this - say it pulls up 5 spammy articles and I go and AFD/tag/CSD them, it's fairly obvious who was using the tool at that point. Further, ORES already does this. This is nothing more than a marketing ploy. EGGIDICAE🥚 15:17, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
This is nothing more than a marketing ploy
So much for WP:AGF. I'm not missing your point – all the comments you've made here indicate you were worried about user data collection. You even started this discussion by creating FUD (... presumably will have access to private data for user accounts
– which is technically impossible by the way). Even if the sole purpose of creating the tool was to get user data – it doesn't sound like the type of data that can be sold to DMPs for money. ORES is maintained by an understaffed team at WMF. I'm quite sure it is possible to create more sophisticated ML algorithms. I do not know whether this is one of those. But by the way you're treating this person, you're ensuring that no one makes another attempt. – SD0001 (talk) 17:38, 7 April 2021 (UTC)- SD0001
My company let me work on this because they are hoping to make the news.
is a direct quote from the OP, who is literally paid to write content about the company hosting this "tool". It is quite literally a marketing ploy. So perhaps, I don't know, read through the thread next time. EGGIDICAE🥚 21:32, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- SD0001
- The difference is that those are individual choices that have nothing to do with Wikipedia. A tool for Wikipedia is a different matter, especially one that is promoted heavily by someone with a vested interest in that company. I would recommend dropping this given you literally said that it was an attempt to get media coverage. EGGIDICAE🥚 21:13, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- I respect your decision. But please bear in mind that there are many Wikipedians who use Facebook, Twitter, and even Google, all of which are known to violate your privacy in ways that Megaputer never could, even if we wanted to. These Wikipedians will likely not have such an objection to Megaputer's privacy policy. I very much hope that a few of them will give my tool a try. Sam at Megaputer (talk) 20:58, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- Thank you for the privacy policy link. I've had a look, and I'm disappointed in a number of the vague statements regarding potentially indefinite data retention and the depth of user-identifying information that you appear collect. I will not be using this tool. stwalkerster (talk) 20:43, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- Why would any company do all this work just to steal data from a dozen or so Wikipedians? That makes absolutely no sense. And of course this isn't being done out of the goodness of Megaputer's heart. Megaputer is a company, and companies don't have hearts. I started building this thing during my unpaid internship. Megaputer let me do it because I was unpaid, and they really didn't care what I did as long as I learned the software. Now I am releasing it. Quite frankly, I'd like to see it do some good. Sam at Megaputer (talk) 20:14, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- The fact that you do not understand what I am asking about with regard to data is a problem. How do we know what data it is collecting from someone using the tool? How do we know this isn't just scraping IPs? What privacy assurances are there? EGGIDICAE🥚 19:59, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- Oh, that data collection. The data I am collecting is just an analysis of how these Wikipedia articles change over time. We aren't collecting any user data. And this tool was built with a proprietary software framework, so it can't be open-sourced. But it might be possible to create an open-source knock off if it is popular, and I would even be willing to help with that. I'm not sure what you mean by "bait and switch". Sam at Megaputer (talk) 19:56, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- As much as I don't want to engage with you, I feel the need to say that I do not appreciate being told that the product of my hard work is a "marketing ploy". You have claimed that my tool is redundant to ORES (it is not), that it steals user data (which doesn't even make sense), and even that I lacked community approval to build it. You are clearly just throwing out allegations and seeing what sticks. All this started with allegations of "spam", and while I could have handled the rollout better, your response to this has been far more disruptive than anything I have done. Sam at Megaputer (talk) 22:02, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- I never once said that it steals data, I said that it's possible given your lackluster response about the privacy policy. And if I'm disruptive, please feel free to take it to the appropriate noticeboard. My marketing ploy comment is completely reasonable given your response to someone asking why you built it was that your company wanted to be in the news. The disruptive one here is you. EGGIDICAE🥚 23:18, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- As much as I don't want to engage with you, I feel the need to say that I do not appreciate being told that the product of my hard work is a "marketing ploy". You have claimed that my tool is redundant to ORES (it is not), that it steals user data (which doesn't even make sense), and even that I lacked community approval to build it. You are clearly just throwing out allegations and seeing what sticks. All this started with allegations of "spam", and while I could have handled the rollout better, your response to this has been far more disruptive than anything I have done. Sam at Megaputer (talk) 22:02, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
I raised this on Sam's user page, but he took umbrage, which is undercutting my AGF. Is there any reason this user isn't yet blocked for all of the above as well as the non-answers & evasiveness re: his prior account? Courtesy @DGG, Praxidicae, Blablubbs, and RoySmith: StarM 18:23, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
- The bity-ness and general rudeness in this thread makes me sad. The OP wanted to do something to help the encyclopedia in an innovative way. Killiondude (talk) 18:26, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
- Sorry but I don't agree with "helping the encyclopedia." He literally said it was because his company wanted to be in the news. Further, I'm super skeptical of an editor who is paid to write about their company reporting competitors for COI, afding articles and tagging other articles as paid/upe/coi. EGGIDICAE🥚 18:28, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
- I was going to stay out of this, but since I was pinged, I'll comment. I would be happier if Sam disclosed his other account, but I've read WP:ALTACCN carefully, and I think a reasonable case can be made that forcing him to disclose the other account would be effectively forcing him to disclose his real-world identity, which we never force people to do. His employer is a small company; anybody familiar with the company would probably be able to figure out who Sam is based on the information he's already disclosed about his work there. He's disclosed that he's paid, disclosed that he's got another account, and disclosed additional details to a CU. Unless a CU wants to go further, I think it's time to drop this.
- As for "We don't need this tool because it does the same thing as ORES", that's just plain silly. There's a huge range of AI algorithms used in classification problems. Even if you're using the same basic algorithms, training a model on a different data set is a significant difference. I'd be happier if they open-sourced the code, but people are free to use the wikipedia data for commercial purposes, with no requirement to disclose their source code. There's also the argument that in a domain like spam detection, disclosing every detail of your model just makes it easier for the bad guys to alter their behavior to avoid detection. So, even in a purely altruistic, "all knowledge should be free" universe, I can understand not disclosing everything.
- And, yeah, I wish Sam would not be quite so effusive about how wonderful his stuff is. If this was in mainspace, it might well be WP:G11 material.
- And finally, on the topic of potential privacy violations by Megaputer, to be honest, I think we're in WP:FRINGE territory here. WMF has an exceptionally conservative privacy policy. It is unreasonable to require anybody who uses WMF data have an equally conservative policy. As long as they're not running on WMF systems, what they log is between them and their users. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:11, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
- I have to disagree with the sock part, Roy – the "Sam at Megaputer" account is being used in ways that a "regular", unpaid account is and participating in discussions internal to the project (participating in AfD's and this thread, tagging an article by a firm that works in a similar industry to Megaputer etc.); per WP:SOCKLEGIT,
Although a privacy-based alternative account is not publicly connected to your main account, it should not be used in ways outlined in the inappropriate uses section of this page
. WP:ILLEGIT is clear about the fact that editing projectspace with an undisclosed alternative account is prohibited, and it makes clear that evasion of scrutiny is a violation of WP:SOCK. Using a privacy sock to participate in projectspace discussions arguably is evasion of scrutiny because it splits contribution histories and prevents people from evaluating your edits as a whole. Blablubbs|talk 12:56, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
- I have to disagree with the sock part, Roy – the "Sam at Megaputer" account is being used in ways that a "regular", unpaid account is and participating in discussions internal to the project (participating in AfD's and this thread, tagging an article by a firm that works in a similar industry to Megaputer etc.); per WP:SOCKLEGIT,
- I can confirm that the alternate account has been disclosed to me as a checkuser. I have checked just now the editing history. It has not been used to overlap in any manner the editing or interests of the current account. Whatever the merits of the project being discussed here, there is in my opinion no violation of sock policy. DGG ( talk ) 14:09, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
- If you continue to have concerns, please do not discuss them in an open forum, but take them to arb com, to avoid the possibility of outing. DGG ( talk ) 23:33, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
- DGG, I'm not seeing the outing concerns here - nobody's tossing out possibilities for who the "other" account is, and Sam has been quite clear about their relationship with Megaputer. They are just discussing whether this situation appears to be in violation of PROJSOCK/SOCKLEGIT, which is entirely reasonable as long as nobody's speculating about their other identity. GeneralNotability (talk) 23:59, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
- It seem obvious to me that further discussion on this line will lead to revealing the identity of the other account. I I do not consider this suitable for discussion on a page devoted to purely technical matters. have listed this on the checkuser list for my colleagues awareness and advice. DGG ( talk ) 04:38, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
- DGG, that is not "obvious" to me at all - again, nobody is even speculating about the identity of the other account. Perhaps it's obvious to you since you've been officially notified of the user's other account. While the discussion is currently more "policy" than "technical", I believe it is still reasonably on-topic (and moving the policy discussion onto VPP would unnecessarily split the discussion). GeneralNotability (talk) 14:18, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
- This thread is mildly disappointing to me, but unfortunately not terribly surprising. I wholly agree with SD0001's comments above. I'd add that it's up to the (potential) users of this tool to decide for themselves if they want to use it; it isn't being embedded on Wikipedia and users aren't forced to use it. There is no policy requiring editors who develop a tool to 'seek consensus' before linking the tool onwiki. It's also not surprising to see a for-profit company looking to keep its source code private or gain publicity. None of this is even remotely a problem though, in the same way the popular CVDetector uses proprietary APIs to offer its service (Google's, I believe?). If it helps Wikipedians improve Wikipedia, and we're getting it for free, that's great. If the company profits from it too, how and why exactly is that a problem for us? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:53, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
- Just to add, I don't understand how someone can call for an editor to be blocked on their userpage whilst appearing to question their value to the project,[8] and then claim that having that comment very reasonably removed with a polite summary is
undercutting my AGF
. What AGF? I don't see any AGF in this section at all. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 02:00, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- Just to add, I don't understand how someone can call for an editor to be blocked on their userpage whilst appearing to question their value to the project,[8] and then claim that having that comment very reasonably removed with a polite summary is
- Comment I'm glad that this "Megaputer tools for Wikipedia" effort had a stop put to it, effectively. Sam at Megaputer sums up the Megaputer position, which is wholly at odd with the open-source ethos Wikipedia is built upon, over at Mediawiki. In reply to a questions asking if the Megaputer code could be open eventually open–sourced, he said "I could ask about it, but I don't think it will be possible. I believe that this grammar check feature is written in our proprietary programing language, which in turn depends on our proprietary grammar parsing algorithms, so open-sourcing it would require giving away too much of what we do. The CEO has expressed a willingness to make our software freely available to editors and WMF staff for the building of bots, tools etc., but releasing that much source code without payment may not be a viable business model. As a company, we still have trade secrets to maintain in order to exist." The fact that the company is the driver behind the functionality, and not a regular user, is also at odds with the way things are usually done. No doubt the user was well-intentioned, but I don't think they understood how sketchy their proposal looks, for a number of reasons-- for example the fact they have engaged in paid editing, and would like to promote a commercial tool to detect promotional editing... --- Possibly (talk) 03:41, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- And...? Which community or WMF policy is being violated here? What's unique here compared to Wikipedia:Turnitin or meta:CopyPatrol or various services using iThenticate or CVDetector? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 04:01, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- Well, presumably those companies did not internally design a specific product for Wikipedia, and then send an actual Wikipedia editor over to Wikipedia to set up an improper alternate account to promote the product. And if they were involved in creating promotion-detection software for Wikipedia, they presumably did not have the previously named editor do some paid editing which caused him to appear at COIN, followed by the editor coming up with software to detect all the things they were accused of at COIN? For starters. --- Possibly (talk) 04:26, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- Again,
Which community or WMF policy is being violated here?
Also, are you saying that those creating something shouldn't communicate and work closely with the users of the product? Because conventional software development wisdom usually has it that developers should actively communicate with users in order to create better solutions that actually solve problems. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 04:39, 14 April 2021 (UTC)- Aside from many issues articulated above, the WMF's stated mission is to "empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain". Free, shared and transparent is at the core of the movement. Have a nice evening.--- Possibly (talk) 05:00, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- The alternate account seems fine to me.
An arbA former arb, current CU, also said as much in this very thread. Have a great evening! Killiondude (talk) 05:29, 14 April 2021 (UTC)- @Killiondude: Which arb would that be? Prior to myself, I see that there have been twelve contributors to this thread (Blablubbs, DGG, GeneralNotability, Killiondude, Possibly, Praxidicae, ProcrastinatingReader, RoySmith, Sam at Megaputer, SD0001, Star Mississippi, and Stwalkerster); and I know of fourteen arbs (listed here) - but I can find no names in common. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:37, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- Hi RR! DGG was an arb until Dec 2020. I am a few months out of sync. I struck and corrected my comment. Thank you for your concern. Killiondude (talk) 21:44, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Killiondude: Which arb would that be? Prior to myself, I see that there have been twelve contributors to this thread (Blablubbs, DGG, GeneralNotability, Killiondude, Possibly, Praxidicae, ProcrastinatingReader, RoySmith, Sam at Megaputer, SD0001, Star Mississippi, and Stwalkerster); and I know of fourteen arbs (listed here) - but I can find no names in common. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:37, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- The WMF's stated missions apply to products created by WMF and its affiliates, and other parties being funded by WMF or its affiliates. They are not applicable to external entities who are using their own resources to create something.
Are you aware that the widely used Earwig copyvio detection tool uses Google's search engine, and that WMF actually pays Google for the services? I don't see you complaining there because Google is closed-source and they're directly earning money every time one of us does a copyvio check. Here, we have Megaputer providing their services for free and people are complaining. Wow! – SD0001 (talk) 12:15, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- The alternate account seems fine to me.
- Aside from many issues articulated above, the WMF's stated mission is to "empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain". Free, shared and transparent is at the core of the movement. Have a nice evening.--- Possibly (talk) 05:00, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- Again,
- Well, presumably those companies did not internally design a specific product for Wikipedia, and then send an actual Wikipedia editor over to Wikipedia to set up an improper alternate account to promote the product. And if they were involved in creating promotion-detection software for Wikipedia, they presumably did not have the previously named editor do some paid editing which caused him to appear at COIN, followed by the editor coming up with software to detect all the things they were accused of at COIN? For starters. --- Possibly (talk) 04:26, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
Bot Partially Non-functioning
I think that I have a specific issue and a general issue to report. The specific issue is that a bot, User:MDanielsBot, has stopped doing one of its tasks. The task is Task 6, which is to clerk the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard by maintaining a table that summarizes the status of disputes. It has stopped maintaining that table. The bot seems to be doing Task 4 properly, which is to dispose of stale reports at the vandalism noticeboard. The instructions say that if the bot is malfunctioning, administrators can press a button to block it, or non-admins can report it at WP:ANI. Presumably a report at WP:ANI will result in the bot being blocked. Any bot should be blocked if it is doing something wrong. In this case the bot isn't doing anything wrong. It isn't doing something right that it should do. The general issue is what should be done if a bot stops doing one of its tasks, and the bot maintainer is on a long wikibreak. It appears that User:Mdaniels5757 has posted a notice saying that they will be back in a few months. In the meantime, their bot is doing its most important task, and isn't doing another task.
What should be done with this bot?
What should be done with bots that are partly non-functioning and do not have a current bot administrator? Robert McClenon (talk) 18:16, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- This is a typical problem with bots. There's nothing that can be done about it. Try emailing Mdaniels; if he sees it, and has time, he might fix it. If not, WP:BOTREQ to find someone else to create a similar bot (presumably this may help make it quicker for someone to do so). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:20, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- User:ProcrastinatingReader - Is the link the Python code that performs the task? If so, that would mean that it would be minimal work for a Python coder to use the existing code, and that would be why User:Firefly is able to make such an offer. I will send the email and provide an update in between 24 and 72 hours. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:27, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- Just noting that I’d be happy to have FireflyBot take this on if it’s deemed necessary (BRFA would be required of course). Ping me if MDaniels doesn’t get back to you! ƒirefly ( t · c ) 20:55, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
- User:Firefly - I have not received a response from User:Mdaniels5757, and it has been more than 72 hours since I sent it. They are either not answering email or not responding to Wikipedia email. That is all right, since we are all volunteers, and they said that they were on break. So it would be appreciated if your bot could take on this extra task. Thank you. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:52, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
Can't log in with Safari on iOS
As the subject line says. I can log in on my desktop, and I can log in on Chrome on my iPhone; but when I use Safari on the iPhone, with the same user name and password as I just used a minute ago in Chrome, I get the error "Incorrect user name or password entered." Any idea what could be causing this? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 12:09, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
- @R'n'B: Some things to check: Are you using a current version of Safari? Are you using stored usernames/passwords? Are you using 2FA? Is the date-time on your device correct? — xaosflux Talk 16:25, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Xaosflux: 1) It's remarkably hard to find a version number for Safari on iPhone, because it is so tightly integrated into the operating system (which is iOS 14.4.2). 2) Although I usually use stored usernames/passwords, I tried entering both manually before posting this thread; it didn't make any difference. 3) Yes, I'm using 2FA, but this error message occurs before I am asked to enter an authentication code. 4) Hopefully, today is 12 April 2021 and it is 1:00 pm EDT. :-) In which case, yes. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:01, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
- R'n'B, You could also try creating a second account. Name it something like User:R'n'B-testing, and add a note on the user page stating that it's an alternate account of yours, to prevent any accusations of socking. Then, see if you get the same behavior with that account. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:32, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
- @RoySmith: Interesting suggestion; I'll try it later. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:01, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
- @RoySmith: OK, I created User:RnB-test2, and that account is able to log in to Safari with no problem. But the original account still can't log in. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 23:53, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
- R'n'B, OK, well at least that says it's nothing inherent with your software. I'm not familiar with Safari on iOS, but I'm assuming it's got some way to clear your cache. I'd certainly try that. There may also be a way to find what cookies you've got in the "wikipedia.org" domain and delete them all. That would be the next thing to try. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:02, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- RoySmith Thanks, I should have thought of cookies myself (but didn't). To be safe, I deleted all wikipedia.org and wikimedia.org and all the other WMF domains. And I still can't log in.... --R'n'B (call me Russ) 00:09, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- R'n'B, Just a hunch, maybe it's the quotes in your user name (but not in your alternate account username). Try another account, with the two quotes just like in your primary account name. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:23, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- So, this is interesting. I just created User:RoySmith-testing'with'quotes. I can log in on my desktop, when I tried it on an iPhone, I couldn't log in with either Chrome or Safari. I was able to log into my User:RoySmith-testing account. So, yeah, I'm guessing something on the phone doesn't like the quotes. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:44, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- R'n'B, Just a hunch, maybe it's the quotes in your user name (but not in your alternate account username). Try another account, with the two quotes just like in your primary account name. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:23, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- RoySmith Thanks, I should have thought of cookies myself (but didn't). To be safe, I deleted all wikipedia.org and wikimedia.org and all the other WMF domains. And I still can't log in.... --R'n'B (call me Russ) 00:09, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- R'n'B, OK, well at least that says it's nothing inherent with your software. I'm not familiar with Safari on iOS, but I'm assuming it's got some way to clear your cache. I'd certainly try that. There may also be a way to find what cookies you've got in the "wikipedia.org" domain and delete them all. That would be the next thing to try. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:02, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- Solved. The problem is caused by the virtual keyboard on the iPhone, which generates a right single quotation mark (U+2019) character by default when the ’ key is pressed, while my user name uses an ASCII apostrophe (U+0027) character. Bizarrely, when you long-press the ’ key, four alternatives pop up, with the straight apostrophe highlighted, which to me intuitively (but incorrectly) suggests it is the default value for that key. In fact, on the iPhone's US English keyboard, all the keys that have multiple possible values assigned to them highlight their default value when long-pressed, except the single and double quotation marks, which highlight a non-default value (that is, the straight quotation marks are highlighted on a long-press, but a normal keypress generates the curly varieties). This is an, ahem, questionable design choice by Apple. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:59, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- This is an option that can be turned off. Go to Settings → General → Keyboard and uncheck the box for "Smart Punctuation" -FASTILY 23:43, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
Add links in Wikidata banner
If there is only one Wikidata link connected to one item (ENWP article connected to Wikidata) there is "Add links" button which allow us to add article in other language directly on Wikipedia but if there is already one link conected then there is button "Edit links" instead of "Add links" which is redirecting us to Wikidata. Would it be possible to add "Add links" button in case when more than one language version is connected? Eurohunter (talk) 11:57, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
Robert Héliès
Hello, for some reason there are two pictures in the infobox of Robert Héliès. I don't know how to fix this and this appears to be a technical problem as the image is only inserted once but appears twice. (It's a double infobox). Paul Vaurie (talk) 18:41, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- Fixed with a work-around in the embedded template which was pulling the image from Wikidata. MB 20:20, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- Thank you. Paul Vaurie (talk) 16:01, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
"Powered by MediaWiki" box logo
I noticed that the "Powered by MediaWiki" box that appears in the extreme lower right hand corner of the desktop version of Wikipedia is still using the old MediaWiki logo. Has a request been made to change it, and if not, how can we do so? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 18:53, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- Sdkb, probably a caching issue. I have it show up on some devices and not others. --Trialpears (talk) 18:57, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- Ah, makes sense. I just checked on another browser and it's changed. Hopefully the cache will clear for most users at some point soon, as I think it's been changed for several weeks now. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:00, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- It's updated on my devices - it's not a major deal but hopefully it'll update everywhere soon. Remagoxer (talk) 19:20, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
Danny Rivera
This is something I have never seen before. When you first load this article, the title looks fine... but keep watching and within a second or two, the capital "R" at the start of the surname reverts to the lowercase styling. Most bizarre. Anyone know why ? Is it just me ? - Thanks. - Derek R Bullamore (talk) 21:07, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- I'm not seeing it. TAXIDICAE💰 21:17, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- I don't see it either. Try the usual: a different browser, viewing the article while logged out. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:25, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- I can't see that, but every time I open the page, the browser—Edge Version 89.0.774.75 (Official build) (64-bit)—prompts me to translate it from Spanish back to English!?--Verbarson (talk) 09:01, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- Probably because of the extensive Spanish-language cites in the lead paragraph.--Verbarson (talk) 09:04, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- On Edge 89.0.774.57 32-bit this doesn't happen (or maybe it's just a matter of browser user settings).
- It's probably because your browser tries to translate that page for some reason - google translate (es to en) lowercases the word "riviera". MarMi wiki (talk) 16:13, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- I can't see that, but every time I open the page, the browser—Edge Version 89.0.774.75 (Official build) (64-bit)—prompts me to translate it from Spanish back to English!?--Verbarson (talk) 09:01, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- I don't see it either. Try the usual: a different browser, viewing the article while logged out. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:25, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
Right to left text confusion
At Hani al-Hassan, I'm trying to fix the date in the first line from l939 to 1939 (note that the first one has an "l" (el) instead of a "1" (one). I think the problem is a hidden character doing right to left text or something, but I can't figure it out. Suggestions?
Similar problems at:
- Gholam Mohammad Niazi with l932
- Ibrahim Nassar with l895
- Amin Abd al-Hadi with l897
- Hamdi al-Pachachi with l886
Thank you, SchreiberBike | ⌨ 21:42, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- I edited Hani al-Hassan and inserted <bdi> tags, see HTML element#bdi. I learned that trick at Commons but don't know if there is some template that would be preferable here for clarity. Johnuniq (talk) 22:18, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- I inserted a left-to-right mark
‎
in the others. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:25, 13 April 2021 (UTC)- Shouldn't {{rtl-lang}} be able to deal with it while providing proper labeling for screen readers? For some reason I still experienced weirdness when testing it. --Trialpears (talk) 22:41, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- I don't know what is best for screen readers. None of the solutions are activated in the edit window. What works there is any text in a left-to-right script like English. For example, for ‎ it is the string "lrm" (or just the initial "l") which works in the edit window. {{rtl-lang}} only places English letters before the text in the edit window so it doesn't work there. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:41, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks all. SchreiberBike | ⌨ 00:31, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- I don't know what is best for screen readers. None of the solutions are activated in the edit window. What works there is any text in a left-to-right script like English. For example, for ‎ it is the string "lrm" (or just the initial "l") which works in the edit window. {{rtl-lang}} only places English letters before the text in the edit window so it doesn't work there. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:41, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- Shouldn't {{rtl-lang}} be able to deal with it while providing proper labeling for screen readers? For some reason I still experienced weirdness when testing it. --Trialpears (talk) 22:41, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- I inserted a left-to-right mark
Weird TOC at Chabad
The entire Activities section in the TOC of the Chabad article is highlighted with red. This might be just my screen—does anyone else see this?—what's the cause? It kind of looks like the same red highlight given to unreliable sources through User:Headbomb/unreliable.js; maybe that has something to do with it? Aza24 (talk) 02:23, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- I can confirm it is indeed caused by that script. (It doesn't show for me when I visit the page, and if I manually import the script in the browser console, the section does turn red). * Pppery * it has begun... 02:25, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
Page titles showing up as section links in summaries
I'm seeing page titles in section links in summaries (e.g. "→Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)") lately more often than I remember. The links are redundant and lead to nowhere because H1 headings don't have IDs matching the captions like lower-level headings do. It looks like they are mostly Android app edits. Is this something that's being worked on? Nardog (talk) 04:12, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- Likely a bug that needs reporting and sorting. Izno (talk) 05:38, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- It looks like when you edit the introduction on the Android app, it includes the page title in the summary as the section name. – BrandonXLF (talk) 05:58, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
CATCSD down
Cross-posting from AN as this is a technical issue, about the lists of CSD by date not being available: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#CATCSD down. Please comment there. Fences&Windows 12:29, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
CS1 errors: extra text: volume
I noticed that an article I brought to FA, First Battle of Newtonia, is now flagging a CS1 error for long volume value. It's unclear what's wrong, because the red text of doom telling me where the error is isn't showing up. My guess is that it's the Foote 1986 [1958] source, but that's literally the title of the volume. Are the CS1 citation templates so inflexible that they flag errors for things with volumes that aren't just a numeral? I'm also now getting messy colorful error messages whenever the "discouraged parameter" |accessdate appears now. Makes me want to switch to <ref> </ref> referncing now, since it seems that the CS1 templates are so inflexible it's just perpetually giving me errors now. Hog Farm Talk 14:21, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- Click on the "help" link. It will tell you that you need to remove the word "volume". Izno (talk) 14:48, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- Done, but no help link was appearing in the article page. Unsure why this is an error now, because "Volume 1, Fort Sumter to Perryville" is going to make more sense to the reader than "1, Fort Sumter to Perryville". Not a fan of a lot of the new citation template changes, as they just wind up making everything harder to use. Hog Farm Talk 15:15, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- The error message is now hidden as a result of this edit.
- Category:CS1: long volume value is not a maintenance or error category; it is a properties category that was created as a research tool to understand how
|volume=
is used. - Category:CS1 maint: discouraged parameter collects articles that use cs1|2 templates with nonhyphenated multiword parameter names. This is not an error category. At some point in time you must have added the css listed at Help:CS1 errors § Controlling error message display to one or more of your personal css pages (these and all other maintenance messages are hidden by default). You can remove that css from your personal css page so that you will not see these messages.
- The error message is at Foote 1986 because
|volume=Volume 1, Fort Sumter to Perryville
contains the word 'volume'. In most cases, the name of a parameter in that parameter's assigned value is inappropriate duplication. This is being discussed at Help talk:Citation Style 1 § Using volume= with cite book. - —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:21, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- Would this be a case where the ((...)) trick could be introduced to allow inclusion of Volume when it is appropriate, as here? — Jts1882 | talk 15:39, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- The accept-this-as-written markup can be used for false-positive
|volume=
errors. Be sure that you report these false positives at Help talk:Citation Style 1 so that they can be fixed (if a fix is possible). - —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:06, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- The accept-this-as-written markup can be used for false-positive
- Would this be a case where the ((...)) trick could be introduced to allow inclusion of Volume when it is appropriate, as here? — Jts1882 | talk 15:39, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- Done, but no help link was appearing in the article page. Unsure why this is an error now, because "Volume 1, Fort Sumter to Perryville" is going to make more sense to the reader than "1, Fort Sumter to Perryville". Not a fan of a lot of the new citation template changes, as they just wind up making everything harder to use. Hog Farm Talk 15:15, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
How to upload a wiki file?
If I have a text file containing wikitext, is there some easy way to upload it to enwiki, short of copy-paste? Yeah, I know I could do something through the API, but surely somebody's already whipped up a wiki-version of scp? -- RoySmith (talk) 14:22, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- @RoySmith: not natively, the only pure "upload" option would be via Special:Import, which would need to be in XML format (c.f. mw:Manual:Importing XML dumps) , and access to which is highly restricted. Any other methods would be shims on top of the webui or api (barring special back-end shell access things which realistically are not going to get exposed to any sort of normal editing processes without a very very good reason). — xaosflux Talk 16:23, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- The closest path to this would likely using the REST API along with some sort of script, but once you start trying to invent that you could just use something like mw:Manual:Pywikibot/pagefromfile.py to do all the heavy lifting. — xaosflux Talk 16:31, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- Xaosflux, Hmmm, the pywikibot thing looks like it might be what I wanted, thanks. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:34, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- RoySmith, I basically have that set up here in my spihelper deployment script. SubjectiveNotability a GN franchise (talk to the boss) 16:54, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- Xaosflux, Hmmm, the pywikibot thing looks like it might be what I wanted, thanks. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:34, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- The closest path to this would likely using the REST API along with some sort of script, but once you start trying to invent that you could just use something like mw:Manual:Pywikibot/pagefromfile.py to do all the heavy lifting. — xaosflux Talk 16:31, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
Technical possibilities of creating an edit filter that targets app users
Black Kite suggested the possibility of creating a filter on User talk:Jimbo Wales#The tragic case of User:CejeroC, even saying It would actually be very trivial to disable mobile app editing through the edit filter.
Having looked at various existing abuse filters and mw:Extension:AbuseFilter/Rules format I see that it's possible to filter by user group, text contents, account age, etc but I can't find any option to filter by tag which would be required for such a filter to even be a technical possibility.
Per T206490 Make it possible for the AbuseFilter to check change tags this is indeed not actually possible, but this task hasn't been active for a while so I don't know if this is still accurate.
Is there any way to target app edits with AbuseFilter? (we're not yet talking about whether we should, but is it even possible?) — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 22:53, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- The
user_app
variable. It's documented on that rules page. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:56, 14 April 2021 (UTC) - Alexis Jazz, the presence of a variable
user_app
suggests to me that it's likely possible to disallow or warn edits that way - but I don't know if warning would show up on the mobile app. FWIW I think that the apps are the problem and need fixed. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 22:59, 14 April 2021 (UTC)- Thank you both, I had overlooked that. Berchanhimez, no, it wouldn't show up. The apps are the problem, but nobody is fixing them. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 23:05, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- The bigger problem, as mentioned at the original discussion, is not actually implementing an edit-filter block, but the fact that (unless the latest version fixes it, which I doubt) the apps are also broken in the respect that it is awkward (iOS) or impossible (Android) for an edit-filter to direct IP app users to a landing page that actually explained why they couldn't edit. IMO this would cause even more problems than actually blocking the edit function in the first place. Black Kite (talk) 23:08, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Black Kite: Is it possible to run a site-wide campaign for a month or so using a CSS class that only app users can see? (I'm hoping such a CSS class exists) — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 23:24, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- If they can't see the warnings, I think it is beneficial to block all edits from the mobile app (via a filter) until such time that the app developers make the apps work. It's not our fault nor our problem that app editors are suffering - and maybe if we disable editing via the app they will actually take notice and fix it. So thus I support fully an edit filter that blocks all mobile app edits until such time as they fix the apps to work with Wikipedia standards of communication. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 23:40, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Black Kite: Is it possible to run a site-wide campaign for a month or so using a CSS class that only app users can see? (I'm hoping such a CSS class exists) — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 23:24, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- The bigger problem, as mentioned at the original discussion, is not actually implementing an edit-filter block, but the fact that (unless the latest version fixes it, which I doubt) the apps are also broken in the respect that it is awkward (iOS) or impossible (Android) for an edit-filter to direct IP app users to a landing page that actually explained why they couldn't edit. IMO this would cause even more problems than actually blocking the edit function in the first place. Black Kite (talk) 23:08, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- Thank you both, I had overlooked that. Berchanhimez, no, it wouldn't show up. The apps are the problem, but nobody is fixing them. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 23:05, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- Here is an example of a user that used mobile app, abuse filter is able to determine that: Special:AbuseFilter/examine/1374567200. — xaosflux Talk 23:46, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
Okay, here's an example of what an edit filter could look like:
(user_app = true) & (action = 'edit') & (article_namespace == 0 | article_namespace == 118) & !('sysop' in user_groups | 'extendedconfirmed' in user_groups | 'rollbacker' in user_groups)
The My rationale here is that extendedconfirmed users generally already know their way around here and how to communicate. Rollbacker is actually unrelated but allows admins to whitelist individual users if needed by granting them rollback. Article_namespace 0 is the article namespace, 118 is the draft namespace. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 08:57, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Alexis Jazz: is this just academic? A major RfC would be needed to actually make a site wide rule that edits should be blocked when using the official app. — xaosflux Talk 10:43, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Xaosflux: There's a bunch of details to work out before a proper proposal could be created. At least some of those details are technical. You'd prefer this continues at WP:VPI? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 11:03, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Alexis Jazz: tech questions are perfectly fine here - but yes, if you want to form a RfC about making a new policy of barring edits VPI would be a good place to start work shopping it (Actually a dedicated RfC page with VPI invite might be better in that case, eventually making its way to VPP) -- I don't think we are at a knee-jerk situation like we were when WP/CXT came up. — xaosflux Talk 11:12, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Xaosflux: I think before we even went there, a definitive answer to the question "is there a timeline for this issue to be fixed?" from the devs would be a useful way forward. The last time this was asked, it was given as WONTFIX, but I'm looking at T274404 and T278838, for example, and it's unclear if this only applies to logged-in editors (for which the iOS app doesn't work either at the moment) or whether it will be fixed for IPs as well. Black Kite (talk) 11:29, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Alexis Jazz: tech questions are perfectly fine here - but yes, if you want to form a RfC about making a new policy of barring edits VPI would be a good place to start work shopping it (Actually a dedicated RfC page with VPI invite might be better in that case, eventually making its way to VPP) -- I don't think we are at a knee-jerk situation like we were when WP/CXT came up. — xaosflux Talk 11:12, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Xaosflux: There's a bunch of details to work out before a proper proposal could be created. At least some of those details are technical. You'd prefer this continues at WP:VPI? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 11:03, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Black Kite: which is the WONTFIX task? — xaosflux Talk 12:38, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Xaosflux: I was looking at AKlapper's 17/12/2019 response to 240889, but looking at it against they didn't actually respond to the 2nd point in Ammarpad's comment. Having said that, the phab then went into limbo anyway. Black Kite (talk) 12:43, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Alexis Jazz: The problem is that Android users will be shown this message:
An automated filter has identified this edit as potentially unconstructive, or potential vandalism.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and only neutral, notable content belongs here.
- That's hard-coded into the app. We can't change it, remove it, or add to it. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 17:13, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- Adding phab:T276139 to the list of problems that need work. — xaosflux Talk 17:29, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- If my following complete guesses are right, this should be relatively easy to fix. The relevant code is here. And the construction of the object here. I've done absolutely zero testing or inspection, but my first impression is that the API fires an error when one tries to edit a page and an AF is hit, and that error code might be the name of the template, or at least that the name is provided in the request (maybe getMessage?). Seems to correspond with the iOS app's handling, which we know dumps the name of the template. So surely either the Android app can do the same, or ideally try to fetch the page with that name? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:46, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
Special:Book background broken
Most of the contents at Special:Book overflow on top of the white background box. I'm guessing this is a CSS issue somewhere, but couldn't find the cause. --Trialpears (talk) 23:11, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- Something is missing a clear or a width. Izno (talk) 23:18, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
- It only happens in Vector: .
- It also happens logged out and with safemode=1. It happens at most other languages, e.g. de:Special:Book, but not other projects, e.g. wiktionary:Special:Book. It doesn't happen at ca:Special:Book and he:Special:Book which got MediaWiki 1.37.0-wmf.1 yesterday. Other projects also have it. We get it today (roadmap) so maybe the issue goes away soon. Special:Version says we are still on 1.36.0-wmf.38 as I write.
{{CURRENTVERSION}}
produces 1.37.0-wmf.1 (d24309a). A variation of the issue does happen at testwiki:Special:Book which is on 1.37.0-wmf.1 but they may do some things differently. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:55, 15 April 2021 (UTC)- We are on 1.37.0-wmf.1 now and the problem is gone. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:24, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
Finding use of _NOTOC_ magic word
Is there an easy way to find all articles that use the _NOTOC_ magic word? I have corrected this in one article I cam across[9], but this doesn't trigger a hidden category, and can't be found using regular search either. In many cases, this NOTOC is unnecessary or unwanted, but actually checking this is rather hard when you can't find them of course... Fram (talk) 14:21, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- Have you tried an insource search? They are not 100% reliable, but they are usually pretty good. You could also Wikipedia:Request a query. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:36, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- Easy way:
insource:/_NOTOC_/
, only 21,808 hits. MarMi wiki (talk) 14:39, 15 April 2021 (UTC) - Another way would be using Special:PagesWithProp, it is limited to 10 thousand tho.--Snaevar (talk) 14:41, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
Convert to CS1|2
Which tools/bots/scripts etc.. exist to automate the conversion of plain text citations to CS1|2 templates? Example:
Thomas, Hugh. Armed Truce: The Beginnings of the Cold War, 1945-1946. New York: Atheneum, 1987.
{{Cite book |author1=Thomas, Hugh |publisher=Atheneum |year=1987 |title=Armed Truce: The Beginnings of the Cold War, 1945-1946 }}
-- GreenC 16:30, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- I'm pretty sure that Wikipedia:ProveIt will create a cite template for you if you have an identifier like an ISBN or a DOI. User:Citation bot can also perform a similar service for you. Neither of them is exactly what you are looking for. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:41, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- There is also DOI Wikipedia reference generator for DOIs. Something closer to what is being asked exists for IUCN citations, the template {{make cite iucn}} takes the raw text IUCN citation and can be used to substitute a {{cite iucn}} template in an article, but it might be difficult to generalise. — Jts1882 | talk 16:58, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
Display of lists with empty bullets
At pages like WP:UAA, extra lines with a single * asterisk are used to separate reports, to help with readability in the edit window (this was the result of a discussion at Special:Permalink/999153318#Spacing). Before today, they didn't have an effect on the displayed page, but suddenly they are showing up as intermediate bullets. Did something just change? DanCherek (talk) 20:29, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- I also noticed this. They weren't displaying like an hour ago, now they are. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:40, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- It's a bug, introduced while trying to fix something else. Being tracked at phab:T280260. the wub "?!" 20:48, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
- And now fixed. the wub "?!" 10:35, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- awesome. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:51, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- And now fixed. the wub "?!" 10:35, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- It's a bug, introduced while trying to fix something else. Being tracked at phab:T280260. the wub "?!" 20:48, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
Template:efn-ua
- ticket:2021022510011461 (OTRS info- access required to view)
Can someone have a look at the template efn-ua on the Scottish Wikipedia and Simple English Wikipedia (for starters). There's an OTRS ticket come in about unexpected behaviour in that rather than displaying [A], [B], [C] as expected it is displaying [upper-alpha 1] etc - examples sco:Seleucus I Nicator and simple:List of U.S. states. Nthep (talk) 13:53, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Nthep: well that was a fun rabbit hole to fall down - it is due to those projects not initiating a local message of index values for the ref function in their cite extension. For example, these pages exist here on enwiki: Special:PrefixIndex/MediaWiki:Cite_link_label_group but not on simplewiki w:simple:Special:PrefixIndex/MediaWiki:Cite_link_label_group. One of their local admins can create the index values, using the appropriate alphabet for their language. — xaosflux Talk 14:45, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks, requests left at simple and sco equivalents of WP:AN. Nthep (talk) 15:05, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- sco has it imported now, thanks for the heads up (also minor point it's Scots rather than Scottish) CiphriusKane (talk) 15:23, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- Based on a Google search, here is a non-exhaustive list of other affected wikis: afwiki (e.g. at af:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire), shwiki (e.g. at sh:R. P. M.), astwiki (e.g. at ast:Octavia), bclwiki (e.g. at bcl:Nicki Minaj), sowiki (e.g. at so:Monako), pawiki (e.g. at pa:ਐਨ, ਗ੍ਰੇਟ ਬ੍ਰਿਟੇਨ ਦੀ ਰਾਣੀ), viwiki (e.g. at vi:Pháp), rowiki (e.g. at ro:Argentina), tgwiki (e.g. at tg:Дунёи Ғарб), tawiki (e.g. at ta:இக்னாஸ் செம்மல்விஸ்), hiwiki (e.g. at hi:भारत के नोबेल पुरस्कार विजेता), srwiki (e.g. at sr:Ontološki argument), jawiki (e.g. at ja:センメルヴェイス・イグナーツ), hywwiki (e.g. at hyw:Տալաս), sdwiki (e.g. at sd:مسلم اسپين), and cebwiki (e.g. at ceb:Bipasha Basu). That's the first sixish pages from the search. There's some pretty heavy hitters on this list, most of all jawiki. What's the best way to contact admins from all of the affected wikis? And is there a better way to get a full list than this Google hack? -- Tamzin (she/they) | o toki tawa mi. 15:08, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks, requests left at simple and sco equivalents of WP:AN. Nthep (talk) 15:05, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- It's not the templates fault, those wikis for some reason doesn't support all the ref special groups. Copy the refs below and paste them into Expand Template page, or any article, then preview the results.
<ref group="note">test</ref> <ref group="upper-alpha">test</ref> <ref group="upper-roman">test</ref> <ref group="lower-alpha">test</ref> <ref group="lower-greek">test</ref> <ref group="lower-roman">test</ref>
MarMi wiki (talk) 15:22, 16 April 2021 (UTC)- I think the "some reason" here is the thing Xaosflux was describing, no? -- Tamzin (they/she) | o toki tawa mi. 15:25, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- Looks like it, I just write slowly. MarMi wiki (talk) 15:30, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) Yes the "upper-alpha" parameter is trying to look up the values in the non-initiated message there, and failing. Notably, not all projects use the same alphabet - so this is something that would normally be localized to them (suppose it COULD get to them via translate wiki - but that may require more things to be done first). — xaosflux Talk 15:31, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- I think the "some reason" here is the thing Xaosflux was describing, no? -- Tamzin (they/she) | o toki tawa mi. 15:25, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Tamzin: hmmm - I suppose since it is so widespread you could request a one-time inclusion in the next Tech News (meta:Talk:Tech/News/2021/17) but first any mw: documentation should be updated and you should check in with the discussion at phab:T198021. — xaosflux Talk 15:28, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Xaosflux: This is one bit of documentation, although I'm not 100% sure I did it right. Are there other bits I need to hit? -- Tamzin (they/she) | o toki tawa mi. 02:08, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
- The way it is done here is somewhat technical debt. Xaos linked to one of the related tasks. I think there are probably others. Izno (talk) 18:59, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
About deploying StructuredCategories in the English Wikipedia
Hello,
I developed a Gadget that generates a link to a structured description of a given Wikimedia category based on the commonly used Wikidata statements to efficiently define its direct members. Please find the description of the Gadget at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Structured_Categories and its JavaScript source code at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Csisc/StructuredCategories.js. I ask how to deploy this tool in the English Wikipedia so that it can be featured in the Preferences for users.
Yours Sincerely,
--Csisc (talk) 14:16, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
Scripts have stopped working
Anyone else have their scripts stop working? All the functions in my ScriptA.js page show up in the left toolbar, but nothing happens when I click on a function. To try to fix this, I made a null edit to the script file and reloaded it, then logged out and back in, but no help. Chris the speller yack 15:53, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Chris the speller Loading User:Chris the speller/script/ScriptA.js and clicking on any of those buttons with the browser console open (see WP:JSERROR) reveals the error
TypeError: Cannot read property 'useWikEd' of undefined
. This is occurring becausewindow.wikEd
is undefined. You do have wikEd enabled right? – SD0001 (talk) 16:12, 16 April 2021 (UTC)- Yes, I have wikEd enabled. I'll take my problem to them. Thanks for the tip! Chris the speller yack 16:20, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
Issue with ClueBot NG
Others and myself have tried asking for help with this on ClueBot NG's talk page, but none of us have received a response. Under a month ago, I made a large edit on the article Aeolian harp. ClueBot flagged this edit as vandalism and autoreverted it. I had a hard time reporting the edit as a false positive on the report interface because the Captcha would never work, and I've been afraid to edit elsewhere because I'm afraid of another strike. Has anybody else had this problem and found any ways around it? If this is the wrong place to ask I'll go back to the ClueBot NG talk page and look for help there again. --DoDososeSe (talk) 17:55, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- Your report seems to have gone through despite the captcha not working (and it works for me). Anyway, there's no reason to be afraid of the being reverted by the bot, because all it can do it post another message to your talk page in the unlikely event you trigger another false positive. * Pppery * it has begun... 18:30, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- To be clear, DoDososeSe, CBNG does not generate "strikes" in the manner you might find on some sites with automated moderation. All that the warnings do is bring an account closer to being reported to administrators. As Pppery said, you're quite unlikely to catch two CBNG false positives, let alone the five you'd need for it to be forwarded to admins, but even if that did happen, the reviewing administrator would not simply take CBNG's word for it; they would review the edits in question to see if they were actually vandalism. Bots can automate some of the warnings, but blocks come from human administrators based on their own assessment. -- Tamzin (she/they) | o toki tawa mi. 07:26, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
Automatic citation in VE mess author and date
It seems that there are some issue with the automatic citation utility in the visual editor. In some URLs the last/first fields get "contaminated" with the date field.
For example the url : https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/03/it-s-very-special-picture-why-vaccine-safety-experts-put-brakes-astrazeneca-s-covid-19 renders as :
- Vogel, Gretchen; KupferschmidtMar. 17, Kai; 2021; Pm, 1:30 (2021-03-17). "'It's a very special picture.' Why vaccine safety experts put the brakes on AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine". Science | AAAS. Retrieved 2021-04-16.
(underlined mine)
And the url : https://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/15-gretsch-electric-guitar-stars-240229, gives this :
- <ref>{{Cite web|last=March 2010|first=The MusicRadar team 18|title=15 ...
I've found the problem in some URLs, both in Chrome and Firefox running in a Android phone.
Someone has experienced the same issue ? Alexcalamaro (talk) 18:17, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- That means the Zotero translators need updating. You can either add a Phabricator task with the Citoid project and someone there may see it, or contribute directly. Izno (talk) 19:01, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks Izno, I have created a Phabricator task as you suggested. Alexcalamaro (talk) 06:20, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
Toolforge Coordinate Map not Working
Problems when clicking on a coordinate link. Ex: 38°53′22″N 77°02′59″W / 38.889440°N 77.049763°W. Ideas? -- Veggies (talk) 19:35, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- Works for me @Veggies: can you be more specific about what the "problems" are you have? — xaosflux Talk 21:22, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
Could This Be A Glitch?
I edit and have always edited via an iPhone, Normally, with my iPhone I have a “mobile view” and “desktop” means of editing of which I prefer to edit via “mobile view” Usually, when I go to my talk page or to the talk page of anyone, the topics contained in the talk page are usually outlined but closed, (you see the heading of the topic but you have to manually click on the topic of your choice if you intend to read the content of that topic, but today I encountered an unusual problem in which all topics of every talk page i came across were already opened and couldn't be closed, (usually, a tap on the topic name should close and open the topic, tapping the heading/topic once opens the content of the topic & re-tapping it would close the topic) but today, the case is strange, the topic in everyone's talk page is permanently open and no matter the number of times you tap it, it wouldn’t just close. Could this be a general glitch? Are there others going through this as well? Could this be an iPhone related problem? Could this be a problem generated by using bots to archive the talkpage? Could it be a script causing this? or could this be a settings related issue that I could easily fix by adjusting the current settings. Please all suggestions would be very much appreciated. Celestina007 (talk) 20:35, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Celestina007: a few questions: (1) are you using a browser or the wikipedia app? (2) What version are you using? (3) are you "logged in" ? — xaosflux Talk 21:22, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Xaosflux, I use a browser(safari) and never have I ever used the app, do you mean what iOS version I use? I use the current one, yes I’m logged in. Thanks for the show of concern, this problem has just ruined my day. Celestina007 (talk) 21:35, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- Noting that we've already ruled out several possibilities:
- The "Expand all sections" option is not checked.
- The mobile site doesn't think they are on a tablet (or else the above option wouldn't even be available)
- So I'm out of ideas. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:53, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- Oh. Should have read more carefully. You said talk pages. @Celestina007:, are the sections expanded by default on articles? Because I'm getting some weird stuff with talk pages, also. Logged in, [10] is showing me no sections at all (as if the page were blank), unless I click the "Read as wiki page" link at the bottom, then I get all sections expanded. But logged out, I see the section titles right away, and the "Read as wiki page" button shows the collapsed sections. I'm using desktop Firefox with the window squished down to about 500px. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:09, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Suffusion of Yellow, that is exactly my problem!! that is it. I thought perhaps it was just me (since nobody else was complaining) and perhaps it was my device doing the malfunctioning and was ready to purchase a new mobile device tomorrow, but now I see it isn’t just me facing this problem. it’s infuriating. Celestina007 (talk) 22:17, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- Oh. Should have read more carefully. You said talk pages. @Celestina007:, are the sections expanded by default on articles? Because I'm getting some weird stuff with talk pages, also. Logged in, [10] is showing me no sections at all (as if the page were blank), unless I click the "Read as wiki page" link at the bottom, then I get all sections expanded. But logged out, I see the section titles right away, and the "Read as wiki page" button shows the collapsed sections. I'm using desktop Firefox with the window squished down to about 500px. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:09, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- Just a guess, but might the "Recent changes" part of Tech News: 2021-14 be related? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:20, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- I had same problem on bnwiki today. Try disabling "Discussion tools" here & see what happens (i might be wrong though). --আফতাবুজ্জামান (talk) 22:25, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- @আফতাবুজ্জামান: That did it for me. Has anyone taken this to phab yet? I couldn't find anything. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:36, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Celestina007: Does disabling Discussion Tools work for you also? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 01:07, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Xaosflux, Suffusion of Yellow, @আফতাবুজ্জামান, thanks to you guys the problem has been resolved. Celestina007 (talk) 08:24, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
- I had same problem on bnwiki today. Try disabling "Discussion tools" here & see what happens (i might be wrong though). --আফতাবুজ্জামান (talk) 22:25, 16 April 2021 (UTC)
- I can confirm enabling the Discussion Tools makes talk page sections invisible at first and uncollapsible upon clicking "Read as wiki page" on mobile, Chromium or Gecko. Reported on phab: T280433. Nardog (talk) 05:37, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
Archiving at Talk:Causality
I hope this is the right place to put this. Archiving at Talk:Causality is seriously messed up, and I don't know how to fix it. It seems there was a reverted page move recently, and also some weird reverting of the archive bot. Can someone please take a look? Thank you -- Mvbaron (talk) 11:55, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
- Okay, I think I've handled this. The page "Talk:Causality (philosophy)/Archive 1" (et al.) have been moved to "Talk:Causality/Archive 1" (et al.) and so the links to Archive 1–4 on the talk page go where there supposed to. The configuration for MiszaBot looks like it should archive to the correct place. — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 12:31, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
- Wow, thank you JohnFromPinckney. That's great! I thought it had to do with the page move, but couldn't figure out the old name. Thank you also for tagging the relevant sections with do not archive. :) Mvbaron (talk) 13:52, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
- Sure thing, but I didn't do so much. I was pretty proud of myself that I even figured out how to un-move the archives and fix the redirects. It was User:PrimeHunter who did the restoring and tagging of that thread. — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 14:51, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
- Wow, thank you JohnFromPinckney. That's great! I thought it had to do with the page move, but couldn't figure out the old name. Thank you also for tagging the relevant sections with do not archive. :) Mvbaron (talk) 13:52, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
Causality is seriously messed up
Made my day. Thanks — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 16:17, 17 April 2021 (UTC)- ha! nice one. :D Also: GhostInTheMachine you have the perfect user name, the concept is one of the greatest in history in my opinion. -- Mvbaron (talk) 17:03, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
Another bad page move: Idea_(philosophy)
Ahhh, the same user made another bad page move. moving Idea to Idea_(philosophy). They also created a new redirect from Idea to Mental representation, so my questions are:
- How do I properly undo a page move?
- How do I delete a redirect? [11]
Thanks :( -- Mvbaron (talk) 14:10, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
- You undo a page move by moving it back to where it came from. The page logs for the old name should have a "revert" link, which is an alternative method. Make sure that you select the "Move associated talk page" option, or you will need to move that page separately. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:37, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
- Mvbaron, In this case, since the page was edited, you will need to make a technical move request. – BrandonXLF (talk) 14:49, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
- alright, thanks, I'll do that. Mvbaron (talk) 15:36, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks everyone for the help. I went ahead and listed it here: Wikipedia:Requested_moves#Requests_to_revert_undiscussed_moves. -- Mvbaron (talk) 15:41, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
- I've reverted the move after seeing your post at WP:RM/TR. Thanks for catching this Mvbaron. – Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 16:22, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
- Mvbaron, In this case, since the page was edited, you will need to make a technical move request. – BrandonXLF (talk) 14:49, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
Template:Country data United States
In Template:Country data United States code is the following line:
| flag alias-1959 = Flag of the United States (1959-1960).svg
However, this file has been superseded by File:US flag 49 stars.svg and it's recommended to use the other file, as you can see on Commons. So we have two options: edit the "flag alias-1959" line with "US flag 49 stars.svg" or rename the File:US flag 49 stars.svg to the File:Flag of the United States (1959-1960).svg name. What is your opinion? Maiō T. (talk) 21:15, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
- Both images are hosted on Commons, so renaming one of them will overwrite the other. I don't think that's an option. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:05, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
MediaWiki:Abusefilter-disallowed
Why is $1 excluded from the message? It really makes no sense for it to be that way, was there a reason behind it? 54nd60x (talk) 09:02, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
- Because someone decided not to include it - this isn't really a technical problem. The default text is:
This action has been automatically identified as harmful, and therefore disallowed. If you believe your action was constructive, please inform an administrator of what you were trying to do. A brief description of the abuse rule which your action matched is: $1
for reference. I see you have duplicate posted this at Wikipedia talk:Edit filter, so follow up there please (may want to link in from WP:EFN for more input. — xaosflux Talk 10:03, 18 April 2021 (UTC)