Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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

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

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

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

If something looks wrong, purge the server's cache, then bypass your browser's cache.
This tends to solve most issues, including improper display of images, user-preferences not loading, and old versions of pages being shown.

No, we will not use JavaScript to set focus on the search box.
This would interfere with usability, accessibility, keyboard navigation and standard forms. See task 3864. There is an `accesskey` property on it (default to `accesskey="f"` in English). Logged-in users can enable the "Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page" gadget in their preferences.

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

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Can someone possibly update this JS?

This currently doesn't have the option to also do /64 for IPv6, like this other script (which I can't quite find right now) has just for v6, and so if the singular IP is blocked it doesn't check to see if /64 is also, which results in duplicates (other script might also have this problem, but at least there's the option to choose /64...) ~Lofty abyss 18:37, 8 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Also, if anyone can possibly fix this, too? It doesn't seem to function like it did before (used to switch focus), instead it just lists edits in some floating side window, now, which isn't as useful... ~Lofty abyss 20:36, 8 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at EasyBlock, there's a lot of ancient code in there that could use updating. You'd probably need to replace easyblock.isIP() with mw.util.isIPAddress() for starters to recognize IPv6 addresses and ranges. Pinging Amorymeltzer, since they seem to be maintaining an updated fork of EasyBlock at User:Amorymeltzer/easyblock-modern.js. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:18, 8 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say "maintaining" is a stretch, and tbh the idea of diving in and re-org-ing easy block isn't appealing. As Ahecht notes, a lot of it—like the sensitive IP checker—predates current systems. Although at least, like most of Animum's stuff, it's clear enough to look through. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 17:34, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is the other script possibly fixable, also, by any chance? ~Lofty abyss 01:50, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Lost all formatting on Firefox

Since this morning, every time I load a page from WP, i get all the content, but no formatting. It's fine on Chrome, and on Ecosia on my phone, but not Firefox on my windows m/c. Firefox 142.0.1, Windows 11 pro, 22H2. I've tried logging out, restarting Firefox, deleting all MW-related cookies. it seems to apply to Wiktionary went wikidata too. Anybody else seen this? ColinFine (talk) 21:15, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Did you accidentally disable the styles in Alt menu > View > Page Style? Otherwise, I don't know (I'm using the same version but on Windows 10 instead, and the formatting is still there) -- perhaps you could look in the developer tools console and see if there are any errors or "Loading failed" errors? OutsideNormality (talk) 21:58, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@ColinFine: It works for me. Have you tried to bypass your cache with Ctrl+F5, not F5 or the reload button alone? PrimeHunter (talk) 08:51, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, @PrimeHunter and @OutsideNormality. I couldn't find "Alt menu > View > Page Style" (Didn't know whether it was something in WP or Firefox), and I did bypass my cache.

But whatever it was, it's working correctly this morning - I don't think it was anything I've done. ColinFine (talk) 09:00, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

But today, it's gone away again. Boo. --ColinFine (talk) 18:10, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And now, a few hours later, it's back again. ColinFine (talk) 21:20, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sudden change to userbox display

Went to update a box on my userbox subpage and suddenly discovered that they're not displaying right. They should be, and up until this afternoon were, displaying "abreast to the screen limits", now it's one box per row. I'm guessing something, somewhere, got edited that broke something? - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 04:37, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And now they're displaying correctly again. Bizzare. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 04:48, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I reverted a change at Module:Userbox. See Template talk:Userbox. Clicking "Related changes" in the sidebar on a page showing a problem can reveal the source. Johnuniq (talk) 05:21, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It should be fixed now, I didn't notice the change in testcases. —Matrix _{ping me}^{when u reply} (t? - c) 17:41, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why is the whitespace messed up on this page?

When I view Noblesse oblige, the whitespace is messed up. See the attached screenshot. In the lead, "aFrench expressionthat" is missing spaces after the "a" and before "that". Likewise with "fullsocial responsibilities". Down in "Meaning and variants", the square brackets around "citation needed" are displaced vertically.

I can't reliably reproduce this. Even more interesting, it looks like some kind of race condition; if I reload the page, I can transiently see the text rendered properly, then a fraction of a second later, it gets messed up. And while I can (sometimes) see this on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noblesse_oblige, I never see it on the permalink version of the same version, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Noblesse_oblige&oldid=1306524664. I also can't reproduce it in an incognito window (I'm using Chrome on MacOS).

Any idea what's going on here? RoySmith (talk) 16:23, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As it doesn't happen when you're not logged in (and I don't see anything in the wikitext source that looks like a possible cause), perhaps it's one of your user scripts or enabled gadgets, which would match the race condition symptom. Have you tried narrowing the problem down by slimming down any customizations you have configured? isaacl (talk) 16:35, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have not yet gone down that path. I was hoping somebody might recognize this from the symptoms and say, "Oh, yeah, that's ..." RoySmith (talk) 16:39, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, removing my entire common.js page makes no difference. RoySmith (talk) 19:40, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And, when I copy it to my sandbox, with the only change being disabling the categories I can't reproduce it. RoySmith (talk) 19:46, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, wow. It's the Google Translate service built into Chrome! It has (duh!) decided the page is written in French and tried to translate it into English for me. This seems to involve adding font tags like:

<font dir="auto" style="vertical-align: inherit;"> ; literally "nobility obliges") is a</font>

and the whitespace that got lost is between adjacent font tags. RoySmith (talk) 20:05, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bundling sources

I am attempting to bundle seven sources per Template:Unbulleted list citebundle at Pavel Roman Memorial, yet the sources are not displaying properly in the reference list at the end of the article. Any advice? Bgsu98 (Talk) 17:41, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Bgsu98: Fixed. Here the }} syntax closes a template so it should only be present once for the entire reference, not after each element. taavi (talk!) 18:16, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Taavi: Thank you so much! Just out of curiosity, is there a template like this that presents the sources bulleted versus unbulleted? Bgsu98 (Talk) 18:21, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Help:Citation merging suggests just using the normal list syntax. taavi (talk!) 18:25, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a bot to convert 'pages=' to 'article-number=' in sources?

Wasn't able to find in archives whether a bot has been developed (apparently not deployed) to automatically repair sources showing in an edit preview the message: "Script warning: One or more {{cite journal}} templates have maintenance messages; messages may be hidden (help)."

I have been fixing many of these manually, but a repair bot would be helpful. For an example, see Osteoarthritis in an edit preview, displaying that 42 references need an "article-number=" fix, with the message in the reference section stating: "{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: article number as page number (link)". Zefr (talk) 19:06, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You might post to Wikipedia_talk:ProveIt to see if that tool can be updated to insert correctly. I believe it creates page numbers from DOI data and not article-number. Johnjbarton (talk) 19:23, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Harv warning issue with Template:CongBio

See 1854–55 United States House of Representatives elections. Cannot figure out how to fix it. See "l" under the Notes section, it's for the Benjamin E. Grey entry in the Kentucky section. - Shearonink (talk) 21:19, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Since there are no short-form references linking to that {{CongBio}} source, the warning message is correct. If you want to suppress the warning message: {{CongBio|G000453|ref=none}}. Use of |ref=none is mentioned in the {{CongBio}} documentation...

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:34, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, I missed that. And, yes what you stated above is true but the documentation is:

ref =ref — for use with the {{harv}} templates for inline citations defaults to:{{harv|United States Congress|ID}} If the author is set to something other than United States Congress then it is also changed here. The ref parameter can be assigned another value including none to unset the parameter.

so the "ref=none" is kinda/sorta hidden. If that blurb were adjusted to make it plain as day for those of us who aren't WP-adepts...yes please. - Shearonink (talk) 14:02, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Mobile readability issue

Issue based on this discussion Template talk:Historical populations#Readability issue ~ MaxA-Matrix 🗨 11:34, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Copy image from Commons

We have a tool to "copy to Commons" for openly-licenced images that were uploaded here, but do we have one to copy images, and their metadata, from Commons, when they are facing deletion, but usable here as fair use? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:02, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

https://wikifile-transfer.toolforge.org/ should work for this. – DreamRimmer ■ 15:08, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:25, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Skip to top and bottom

Not sure if this affects anyone else in the same manner as it does me....but Template:Skip to top and bottom when in mobile view shifts to the left side and suppresses (or should I say covers) linking capability of our bottom string of links if they are on the very bottom line

Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers Contact Wikipedia Code of Conduct Developers Statistics Cookie statement Mobile view

See here for an example.

This also happens on the actual template page as seen here in mobile view

Moxy🍁 23:35, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly due to this edit by User:Matrix, which was apparently to have it stop covering a help button of some sort. Anomie ⚔ 00:59, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agree on that as the cause. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:23, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Moxy, Anomie, and Redrose64: yes, try going to [1] on a mobile device. You can see the buttons clearly covering the help panel. If you guys have any better ideas feel free to implement them. —Matrix _{ping me}^{when u reply} (t? - c) 17:49, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Matrix: I'm not seeing anything there that looks like a "help panel" in the first place? Anomie ⚔ 20:08, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Anomie: see [2], you can see how they could intersect (I don't have my phone with me rn) —Matrix _{ping me}^{when u reply} (t? - c) 20:09, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Matrix: I see it in your screenshot, but I don't see it when I visit the page myself, either logged in or while logged out. Anomie ⚔ 20:17, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Anomie: try creating a new burner account then retry. You might have disabled it, and the help gadget thing is only for registered users. —Matrix _{ping me}^{when u reply} (t? - c) 20:20, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Matrix: The only default-enabled gadgets I have disabled are "^(D) Add extra buttons to the legacy (2006) editing toolbar" and "^(D) refToolbar: add a "cite" button to the editing toolbar for quick addition of commonly used citation templates", neither of which sound likely. I also don't see any gadgets with a description that sounds like this thing. Anomie ⚔ 20:27, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The question mark is the "editor help panel", you can enable it in Preferences. Matma Rex talk 21:12, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't send me off to untrusted websites that want me to set cookies and fill in a form before I see the image. The editnotice displayed when you posted here, in its third bullet, suggests to follow the directions at Wikipedia:Screenshots of Wikipedia. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:30, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As the advice given on that page is very tedious, I usually recommend using https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/file/upload/ for screenshots related to bug reports (broadly defined). Matma Rex talk 21:20, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a direct link to the image: https://i.snipboard.io/Y5eDwi.jpg OutsideNormality (talk) 00:01, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@OutsideNormality: That is not in accordance with either WP:WPSHOT or Matma Rex's suggestion to upload to Phabricator. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:01, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Detecting if template param contains a template

I’m working with Module:String and trying to determine if a given parameter contains a template. So given the parameter {{{weight}}}, I want to see if that value is a string (like 123 lbs) or if it contains a template (like {{cvt|123|lbs}}). I can’t seem to get the code to work though… Even something as simple as {{#invoke:string|find|{{{weight}}}}|cvt}} isn’t returning the expected results when I know that cvt is in {{{weight}}}. What am I missing? Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 07:07, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that wiki text evaluation is from the "inside" outwards. This means that the parameter value should already have been processed (and any templates expanded) by the time the module sees it. It might be OK to check for the brackets instead. A length pre-check might also be wise, as the weight value might possibly have a reference appended. get_convert_weight_args seems to be looking for the NBSP that is output by the convert template, so that might be a another viable test — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 07:37, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Zackmann08, you can't do this without wrapping the input in nowiki tags. See e.g. how {{For nowiki}} works. — Qwerfjkl talk 11:34, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See also T322513, where an ability to access the unparsed content of an argument was requested. I thought there was an earlier such request as well, but I can't find it now. Anomie ⚔ 13:59, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

{{msgnw:...}} transcludes the unparsed wikitext. See Help:Template#Problems and workarounds and mw:Help:Templates#Ways to invoke a template. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:04, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks all! This is good info. —Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 22:15, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Redlinked category on user .js settings

The latest run of Special:WantedCategories features a nonsense Category:$1, being autogenerated by code on a user's .js settings page that I can't fix because I don't have the group privilege to edit that kind of content. I know that there have also been multiple instances of this category recurring in the past, with it sometimes even having been created to get it out of the reds before being deleted at CFD — but every documented instance I can find records for has always been tied somehow to user settings pages.

So two questions:

Could somebody who has script editing privileges edit the page to remove the redlinked category?
If this is a thing that's going to recur every time an editor makes any kind of mistake in their js settings code, then is there any way we could just preemptively block it at the server level before it occurs at all?

Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 14:22, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A common way to deal with this is to wrap the entire script in // <nowiki>/// </nowiki>, which the original HotCat also does. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 14:33, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Waddie96 This is referring to User:Waddie96/Hot Cat.js. – SD0001 (talk) 15:08, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Done nowiki'd that page. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:12, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Waddie96: FYI: there are also script errors on your page, left in place. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:13, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Bearcat: The usual way to request this is to either submit an edit request with {{edit interface-protected}} on the talk page - the "submit an edit request" link shown when you try to edit the page should mostly automate that - or if it's suddenly affecting many pages at once, a post on WP:Interface administrators' noticeboard. Disabling it automatically isn't really feasible without making it impossible to put intentional categories (rare) or links (less rare) on user js/css pages, which lets, for example, this work. —Cryptic 15:26, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As far as disabling it, mw:Manual:$wgTextModelsToParse does exist. But changing that would break things like what Cryptic mentioned just above, and in the past people have noticed when it broke (e.g. T43155 and T70757). Anomie ⚔ 16:02, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's also a patch by Aasim (phab:T373834) which actually does disable parsing but only for the code that isn't comments. – SD0001 (talk) 07:12, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm that's so weird, it is a minified JavaScript from c:MediaWiki:Gadget-Hot-Cat.js which categorizes into c:Category:$1 too. Is there an issue if it does? Sorry about that though, I'll use the gadget from the preferences tab waddie96 ★ (talk) 07:09, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And I blanked that page. waddie96 ★ (talk) 07:10, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

However it sounds like a bug in Special:WantedCategories which should be ignoring pages where Page content model is javascript. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:16, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2025-38

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

Updates for editors

References lists that are made using the <references/> tag will now automatically display with columns in Vector 2022 when readers are using its 'standard' settings for text-size and page-width. [3]
Starting in the week of October 6, on small wikis and medium wikis that have the CampaignEvents extension enabled, all autoconfirmed users will be able to use Event Registration as an organizer. No changes will be made for large wikis unless requested in Phabricator. This change is being made to make it easier for more people to use Event Registration, especially on wikis that are less likely to have policies related to the Event Organizer right. Learn more.
Users that search using regular expressions (regex) can now use additional features including:
- for the intitle: keyword: metacharacters for start-of-line (^) and end-of-line ($) anchors [4]
- for both intitle: and insource: keywords: shorthand character classes for digits (\d), whitespace (\s), and word characters (\w); and escape codes for line feed (\r), newline (\n), tab (\t), and unicode (e.g. \uHHHH). [5]
When you search for text that looks like an IP, the system will now show search results. It used to take you to the contributions for that IP instead of showing search results. [6]
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 24. This is planned at 15:00 UTC. This is for the datacenter server switchover backup tests which happen twice a year. You can read more about the background and details of this process on the Diff blog.
View all 24 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug was fixed that affected users who used the page-tabs to switch from wikitext editing of a section into the visualeditor. [7]

Updates for technical contributors

The MediaWiki Interfaces team is redesigning the Wikimedia REST API Sandbox with Codex. If you have feedback on improvements for the API documentation or what makes developer experiences smooth (or frustrating), you’re invited to join an upcoming discovery interview, or leave feedback onwiki. Learn more.
Edits to Wikidata aliases (an alternative name for an item or a property) will now be shown in RecentChanges and Watchlist entries on other wikis less often, reducing unnecessary notifications. This will reduce the overall quantity of 'noisy' entries. Wikidata's own pages remain unchanged. Learn more. [8]
The new Unicode 17.0 version has been released. The datasets on Commons for the Module:Unicode data have been updated. Wikipedias that do not use the Commons datasets should either update their own data or switch to the Commons datasets.
Users of the Wikimedia Enterprise Structured Contents endpoints can now access Parsed Tables. The new Parsed Tables feature extracts and represents Wikipedia tables in structured JSON. This improves machine accessibility as part of the Structured Contents initiative. Structured Contents output is freely available through the On-demand API, or through Wikimedia Cloud Services.
A dataset of English Wikipedia biographical information from Wikimedia Enterprise has been published on Kaggle, for evaluation and research. This provides structured data from more than 1.5 million biographies, including birth and death dates, education, affiliations, careers, awards, and more (from a June 2024 snapshot).
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

Scholarship applications for Wikimania 2026 in Paris, France, are open until October 31.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 17:02, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It feels like a long time since I've done this, but I'm actually cheering the regex improvements in search. Big Thanks!! Searching on titles will deliver more specific results, as I'm regularly looking for articles that begin with the top-level subject, like what city or state it's in. Stefen 𝕋ower_{'s got the power!!1!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 17:23, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Effect of too much indenting

In a discussion on a talk page, it appears that if there is a discussion with so much indenting (because of too many levels of replying and back-and-forth, the left margin gets first toward the middle of the page and then goes past the right margin, so that the text is invisible on a normally centered screen. A page where this can be seen is Talk:Rape_in_Islamic_law#Dispute_resolution_(third_opinion). I can take a screen shot to illustrate this if necessary, but it appears that it can be viewed on that talk page. My question is whether this is considered a bug, or whether it is a feature or misfeature that is the result of the excessive number of indents. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:47, 15 September 2025 (UTC) I have verified that this can be observed with both the Monobook and the Vector skins. I am using Firefox and Windows 11. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:50, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

{{Outdent}} exists to work around this basic problem with indenting in discussions. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:52, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) I don't see invisible text (ha), but I do have to scroll right to see it and the latest replies get compressed into a narrow column, making them hard to read. The usual solution is to use {{outdent}} to cut back on the levels of indenting, see WP:OUTDENT for further details. Anomie ⚔ 20:53, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I can confirm that this is an issue on Linux using both Chrome and Firefox. The symptom is that line-wrapping is not happening for the entire thread, even for responses with a reasonable indentation level. I applied outdenting templates to the thread with a script, using a max level of 6, and it is now readable. Xan747 (talk) 23:00, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My question now is whether a third-party editor is allowed to outdent an existing dialog that rolls of the screen. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:22, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WP:TPFIXFORMAT approves of Fixing format errors that render material difficult to read, specifically including Fixing indentation levels. Personally I think 6 is a bit too little, and Xan747 may have screwed things up by doing things like formatting [9] as a reply to [10] rather than [11] as it was before, but 🤷. Anomie ⚔ 01:38, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Based on this feedback, I undid my changes and added back two new comments. Xan747 (talk) 14:16, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsible tables in mobile view

mw-collapsible
Lorem ipsum	dolor sit amet

collapsible
Lorem ipsum	dolor sit amet

Collapsible tables using the class collapsible do not work in the mobile version. (They are open, and can not be closed.) Only those using mw-collapsible work as they should. Could somebody fix that? BTW, what is the point of having both classes? Are they intended for slightly different use-cases? Watchduck (quack) 08:46, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Watchduck collapsible is deprecated, you should be using mw-collapsible. collapsible has some backwards compatibility code in English wikipedia's local Javascript, but this probably doesn't run in mobile indeed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:58, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The "collapsible" class is currently, silently, treated as an alias for "mw-collapsible". Should H:COLS and the like be explicit in saying that "collapsible" should be replaced? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 13:29, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A quick search for "wikitable collapsible" finds 13,450 articles. Should there be some push for the uses to be changed or will the classes continue to be treated as aliases forever? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 13:35, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I see 17,160 uses of wikitable collapsible and another 6,951 uses of class=collapsible. Maybe someone can do a bot task to replace them. – SD0001 (talk) 14:51, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a little confused by the difference between the statements by GhostInTheMachine (it's an alias) and TheDJ (it's deprecated and probably doesn't work in mobile). I don't think both can be true. If the latter is true, we probably should replace instances of "collapsible" with "mw-collapsible". – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:15, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It’s deprecated in Mediawiki, but English Wikipedia just never updated all the content (because doing so wasnt a priority and even without the alias handling, it ‘degrades’ into an uncollapsed state, which means it is readable regardless, so not a big problem. All content should always be consumable as being uncollapsed as being collapsed is not something that can be guaranteed [think print, google results, Alexa and all other non-standard forms that will ALWAYS have uncollapsed content]). Mobile was never a problem because it didn't support collapsing until very recently.

But English Wikipedia community has a custom handler to support the old classname. Templates have mostly been updated, but there is a lot of bare usages of collapsible on very old content. Advise is to update the content, because if its still around, that likely means the article is barely ever edited and the content has generally more problems than just collapsible. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:42, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The "collapsible" class is not actually an alias, but there is code in mediawiki:Common.js that sees "collapsible" and just adds "mw-collapsible". So it is treated as an alias. While that happens, there is little motive to change the class name. Once something has been flagged as deprecated for a decent time, making use of it needs to hurt at least a little bit. Is there any simple way to trigger an edit notice or should we just unleash a bot? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 18:26, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I recalled my main reason that I haven't just done it myself and it's that MOS:COLLAPSE says we probably shouldn't have things that collapse in mainspace at all that aren't navboxes and the like. So the bot task could either be: move everything over to mw-collapsible, or, remove every use of collapsible in the main space. I added that as a significant caveat on the working page. Izno (talk) 21:08, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Removing from mainspace in compliance with the guideline is actually a better idea. Gonnym (talk) 17:18, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Probably going to need an affirmative RFC for that path, of course. Izno (talk) 17:40, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there's any hard prohibition on using mw-collapsible uncollapsed in mainspace, just that it should not be collapsed by default. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:20, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Ahecht: Uncollapsed is the default initial state for mw-collapsible (see mw:Manual:Collapsible elements#With specified initial state). Whilst there is an uncollapsed class, it's associated with the collapsible class; the corresponding class to positively set uncollapsed for mw-collapsible ought to be mw-uncollapsed, but it's not defined (unlike mw-collapsed). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:54, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@GhostInTheMachine I don't think there's an easy way to do an editnotice, but we could set up an edit filter that puts up a warning when the user tries to save the page. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:22, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yet another good reason to get rid of the collapsible class is that VisualEditor is unaware of it for collapsible tables. It has a switch for collapsible tables, but only recognizes and works with the mw-collapsible class. Ponor (talk) 21:58, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If no content changes are made, this would be fixed by phab:T375538 being completed.

I do however support making content changes to correct the current state of things. Someone just needs to make the bot for the probably ~20k replacements that would need to be done for ad hoc tables (and potentially divs). Izno (talk) 17:54, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(I should probably have a spot for collapsible on MediaWiki talk:Common.css/to do but just such a low priority barring the random question like this one.) Izno (talk) 17:58, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(Ok I added a spot at MediaWiki talk:Common.css/to do#Collapsible in case anyone else wants to coordinate all the fun.) Izno (talk) 21:03, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A slower way to get this done would probably be to get these replacements included in WP:GENFIXES. But is anyone maintaining AWB nowadays? – SD0001 (talk) 08:54, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There is minimal but non-0 activity on the maintenance side. Izno (talk) 16:15, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Does LUA logging work on iPad?

Does anyone know if the Lua logging functions work on iPad? I do all my editing on an iPad these days and despite multiple attempts with mw.log(), I cannot get anything to show up in the log… Is there some trick that I’m missing? —Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 06:44, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Zackmann08: I don't see why it wouldn't work on iPad. What steps are you taking to see the log? I believe you need to be previewing a page that uses the module you're editing; the log shows under "Parser profiling data" (in a text filed that is initially, for some reason, collapsed). Ponor (talk) 09:59, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I got it to work there finally. I was expecting it to display in the debug log area… Only now realizing that I can actually TYPE commands in that area and execute them… Feeling a little dumb. Clearly time for sleep. —Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 10:02, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Zackmann08 All that *is* a little confusing. When you wake up, see if User:Jackmcbarn/advancedtemplatesandbox.js can help. It lets you pretend you're editing any module (even the protected ones) when previewing a page. Ponor (talk) 10:09, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Zackmann08 If you want the Lua log to show up in your browser's debug console (the one built-in to Safari or whatever mobile browser you're using), you can add the following to your Special:MyPage/common.js:

var wppr = mw.config.get("wgPageParseReport"); if (wppr && wppr.scribunto && wppr.scribunto["limitreport-logs"]) {console.log(wppr.scribunto["limitreport-logs"])}

--Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:07, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Add a menu item to MediaWiki:Histlegend

Proposal: add the copyright check tool into the page history submenu, see MediaWiki talk:Histlegend#Copyvio Detector menu item. This will simplify the use of the tool to verify potential plagiarism. --Geertivp 11:04, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#What to do with Template:Updated?

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#What to do with Template:Updated?. Sapphaline (talk) 12:37, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

TWL and Cambridge

Is the Wikipedia Library not accessing Cambridge works for anyone else? Some that aren't accessible (all these used to work): [12] [13] [14]. Same thing happened in March (⚓ T387685 Wikipedia Library: Accessing Cambridge no longer works) which fixed itself a week later, but IIRC this has been the case for over a month. Kowal2701 (talk) 22:23, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I reported this at the end of August. The open ticket is https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T404456 Johnjbarton (talk) 23:18, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Citoid queries

There have been no responses to queries raised at Wikipedia talk:The Wikipedia Library/Citoid.

Please can someone take a look?

And should we redirect that page here (or to Wikipedia talk:The Wikipedia Library, or somewhere else)? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:50, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Responded at Wikipedia_talk:The_Wikipedia_Library#Citoid_queries. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 12:32, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]