Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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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).

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Merging talk pages across accounts: good or bad?

Is it advisable to redirect one's old account's talk page to the current one, or not? I also want to move the talk archive subpages to my current account as a continuation (a return from vanishing)? 8rz (talk) 07:49, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

Sure, its just a redirect page. Sort of defeats some of the principles of using account vanishing, and also no one (including you) can prove that it is "your" old account. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:34, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

One can always check the revision history but it wouldn't be something people would instinctively go for to inspect if it is 2 different accounts or just 1. I get your point. 8rz (talk) 09:37, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Note as per Wikipedia:Courtesy vanishing#What vanishing is not, if a vanished user returns to editing, the vanishing can be reversed. isaacl (talk) 15:19, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

At stewards@wikimedia.com they told me and I quote "The account vanish workflow is not reversible. You may however simply create a new account and begin contributing again.". So I created a new account and now we are here. 🤷 I've been trying to get 2 of the rights I had prior back, but've hit a snag...anyway...still doing my things, tennis lists (records and stats), my forte... My MO checks out...but oh, well. Stewards' word is law. Nothing I can do about it... 8rz (talk) 15:39, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

The vanish workflow really is not practically reversible. In addition to changing the username and locking the account, which stewards can undo, it also removes the email, password, and any other authentication data like 2FA from the account, which they can't undo. More importantly, removing the email etc. makes it difficult for anyone to prove that you're the same person who previously used the account (which is the point of vanishing), so while it's possible for system administrators to reset the email, this generally won't be done.

I think the text at Wikipedia:Courtesy vanishing mostly refers to an older vanishing workflow, which was not a software feature, but just involved someone renaming and banning the account. That was easily reversible. The page was partially updated when the new workflow was introduced (e.g. diff), but the bits about reversing it probably need to be updated still. Matma Rex talk 17:05, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Now would be as good a time as any to update Wikipedia:Courtesy vanishing. 8rz (talk) 18:51, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Apologies for being unclear. The text does not mean that the account can be restored for use. It means that the account can be renamed back to the original name, so that the user is no longer vanished. Because vanishing is a courtesy for those who never edit again, the original account name is restored when the editor returns. isaacl (talk) 21:47, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Well, I already piled up a handful of edits 1k+ in the opening week of the new account, so I am good. No need to rename it. I left a notice on both accounts' user- and talk pages 1 is a continuation of the other and the 1 I am using right now has a much shorter name, which is easier to remember. But thanks for the consideration and helpful info. Much appreciated, isaacl. 8rz (talk) 22:15, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Restoring the original account name isn't for your benefit. It's to assist the community with traceability. Once you return, you no longer meet the criteria for a courtesy vanishing. isaacl (talk) 22:23, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

@Matma Rex I get what you are saying, but the description at Wikipedia:Courtesy_vanishing says "... the vanishing can be reversed" and "If the user returns, the vanishing will likely be fully reversed". Maybe the doc is incorrect. David10244 (talk) 00:08, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Old mobile skin changed?

new Minerva when logged in

classic Minerva when logged out

While logged in, when switching to the mobile version on desktop, Minerva now displays as Legacy (my default skin) instead as the Minerva I remember. Only when I log out, do I get to see the classic mobile version. What happened to the classic mobile display from before? Did it get updated in the interim (was absent Sep 2024–25)?

Does it have something to do with the user vector.js page settings where I can display the old Minerva will display for me properly? 8rz (talk) 10:54, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

Both of the images at right are Minerva. The left is what would typically be displayed at a narrow resolution while the right is what would typically be displayed at a wide resolution.

It is possible that you clicked the 'display as mobile' link lying around on desktop (the footer of Vector, though I notice that you have installed a script that does it also). You can reverse this by clicking the link in the footer again for display desktop view.

I know that WMF has recently adjusted some things about how mobile detection works in anticipation of the forthcoming removal of the .m subdomain. It is possible that these adjustments have affected things. Or it is possible that much earlier adjustments are affecting how you think things should display or did display.

Lastly, you may have added a script in your lengthy common.js which affects how things display. You will have to troubleshoot that on your own. Most people use a binary search method, though the only script I can see that would affect it is the one mentioned earlier. Izno (talk) 17:42, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

I blanked my .js page, purged it and I am still seeing the same when on mobile view on desktop. I guess that's the way things are now. I guess it's back to logging out to get the OG mobile view... was using this to troubleshoot issues on mobile for sticky charts...oh, well. 8rz (talk) 22:40, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

Check you have the responsive setting enabled in skin preferences.

In your browser please also check your haven't clicked "use desktop site". 🐸 Jdlrobson (talk) 14:17, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

responsive setting. Can't find such option in the "Appearance" tab. I am using vector legacy (2010) skin. I see that there is MinervaNeue now. What happened to the old Minerva skin? 8rz (talk) 15:17, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

That has always been its name while it's been a skin (it wasn't its own skin until sometime between 2015 and 2020). Izno (talk) 16:53, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

@8rz: Minerva was renamed Minerva Neue way back in mid 2017, round about the time that it was separated out from MobileFrontend and made a selectable skin in its own right, see phab:T71366. In some areas, the names are synonymous; in others, you still need to omit the "Neue". For example, try using a query string to force VPT to display in that skin: useskin=minerva and useskin=minervaneue. Notice that the second one isn't recognised as a valid skin, so you get served the default, Vector 2022. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:43, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

As for responsive, this is at Preferences → Appearance, just after the skin selector, below the subheading "Skin preferences" and labelled as "Enable responsive mode". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:48, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

@Redrose64, as I mentioned earlier, "Enable responsive mode" doesn't show up for me (see). 8rz (talk) 10:06, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Update: Vector 2022 skin supports responsive mode. Vector 2010 used to support it as well but not anymore, it would seem. 8rz (talk) 10:18, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

I somehow managed to be responsive in Vector 2010 in mobile. I guess it works now. 8rz (talk) 10:29, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Possible signature parameter glitch

Hey, I went to Babe Ruth on my mobile iPhone and the signature at the bottom of the infobox looks off center and crammed to the left for some reason. When speaking with another wiki user, they said it actually looks fine and centered to them on mobile. Not sure what the problem is, but thought I would bring it to your attention. GOAT Bones231012 (talk) 20:03, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

The infobox is doing something weird where it is embedding an {{infobox person}} template with JUST the signature parameter. This then creates some sort of very minimal 2 column infobox inside the primary infobox. Because this embedded infobox only has a signature image, it is smaller than the available space. The mobile layout doesn't really expect this layout, and simply lefts aligns the subtable, instead of centering. I'd advise taking this to the talk pages of the respective infoboxes. They built this tower of babylon, they will know best what to do I think. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:35, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

It's because mobile CSS sets display: block on the table below the mobile token width. It has little to do with alignment.

I'd just personally treat it as a "will be fixed by future upgrades at some point". There's no elegant fix for it today. Izno (talk) 16:36, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Got it, thanks. GOAT Bones231012 (talk) 16:47, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

GOAT Bones231012, is this related to Wikipedia talk:Linter#Infoboxes showing up due to improperly embedded child infoboxes? If so the fix is to remove the embedded infobox. — Qwerfjkltalk 10:58, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Hey @Qwerfjkl, I’m not sure, sorry I’m very dumb when it comes to these technical things😅. I see a module for infobox person at the bottom of Ruth's infobox baseball biography if that's what you mean. GOAT Bones231012 (talk) 15:22, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

GOAT Bones231012, I can't see the issue, but you can remove the child infobox (and move the signature parameter to the main infobox), and preview to see if it fixes the issue. — Qwerfjkltalk 20:15, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

I’ve actually tried doing that myself earlier. I was tinkering around with removing the other infobox, module, both, etc. and previewing it and still nothing, but I do appreciate the advice. Doesn’t seem like it’s even affecting a lot of people on mobile so I won’t fret too much about it. Hopefully per Izno, it will eventually be fixed at some point. GOAT Bones231012 (talk) 20:28, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Top / Bottom arrows overlapping links

As can be seen in the given picture, arrows to navigate to the top or bottom of page overlap links in the talk message. This screenshot is from a user's talk page but can also be seen on Teahouse and other forum pages.

Specs: Google Chrome browser (version Version 136.0.7103.114 (Official Build) (64-bit)) on Windows 11 Kingsacrificer (talk) 20:03, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

There are basically two options for this: Remove {{Skip to top and bottom}} from the page in question, or have individual users bothered by it add the CSS from Template:Skip to top and bottom#Example to their Special:MyPage/common.css. IMO people who like the functionality provided by this template should lobby for it to be added to browsers so they can have it everywhere on the Internet, or failing that use something like Greasemonkey or Tampermonkey in their browser to do the same, or failing that get a gadget created so they can enable it for themselves on every page, or failing that use a user script like User:Qwerfjkl/scripts/skipToTopAndBottom.js to do the same, rather than sticking a template onto random individual pages and forcing everyone annoyed by it to opt out. Anomie⚔ 20:18, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

people who like the functionality provided by this template should lobby for it to be added to browsers - why not just use Home and End? Sapphaline (talk) 21:34, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

Mobile, I guess? Although at least one proponent claims it's not just for mobile. 🤷 Anomie⚔ 22:08, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

Why should it be removed at all?

Why can't the code be fixed to ensure it appears lower on the page and hence doesn't overlap with links? Kingsacrificer (talk) 12:48, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

It already is at the bottom of the page? ... Oh, there's custom CSS for Vector 2022 (and for Minerva) that makes it behave differently in those skins, in that it's confined to the content area of the page. User:Matrix, looks like this is more of your doing? Anomie⚔ 13:08, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

@Anomie: Yes, I can confirm. There's not much space in Minerva for stuff like this, so it might be better to hide. The main problem is we can either hand position: fixed (and overlap all the links) or position: sticky (which can sometimes be buggy). —Matrix _{ping me}^{when u reply} (t? - c) 17:40, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

I think this template could be displayed in a separate column, at least for Vector-2022 users as it's very lenient whitespace-wise, unlike any other desktop skin (sadly). Sapphaline (talk) 21:55, 28 September 2025 (UTC)

These buttons are really annoying, now it fully covered the "Reply" submit button of the form. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 08:00, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Exactly my point. Kingsacrificer (talk) 13:13, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Account has no block log and multiple blocks years apart

User:Byxakissaren was registered on 31 January 2007, according to Special:Log/Byxakissaren. The account was blocked some time later, but when?

• Go to the user's block log (Special:Log/Byxakissaren, and reconfigure User logs to show "Block log" instead of "Main public logs"), and you see no entries at all.
• Special:Block/Byxakissaren says that the account was blocked indefinitely by User:Aaron Schulz at 04:27 on 4 June 2007.
• Special:CentralAuth/Byxakissaren says that the account was registered (apparently as some sort of global version of an account on another Wikimedia wiki) at 20:12 on 13 April 2013 and blocked in the same minute, but managed to make 24 edits between registration and block.
• Special:Contributions/Byxakissaren says A user with 24 edits. Account created on 31 January 2007 and lists sixteen live edits, and Special:DeletedContributions/Byxakissaren says the same thing and lists eight deleted edits. Normally Special:Contributions has a big banner noting the status of a blocked user, but it's missing from this user's contributions.

Any idea what's going on here? In particular, since the account was editing in 2007, why would it have been created in 2013? Nyttend (talk) 04:07, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

The 2013 date is associated with the completion of SUL. Izno (talk) 04:33, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Oh, so that's the date of the creation of a global account, not the creation of an en:wp account associated with the global. Special:CentralAuth/Nyttend gives 2008, not the 2006 date for my account's creation. Good to get that resolved. Now...any idea why the June 2007 block is apparently missing from the account? Nyttend (talk) 09:27, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

It may be a software glitch. Special:Block/Byxakissaren and Special:Block/Sluta att utrota show completely identical active blocks in the same minute but only the latter has a block log entry about it. User:PrimeHunter 12:34, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Seems like phab:T4505, in general: the log entry didn't save. It's not going to be fixed. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:55, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, Xaosflux and PrimeHunter. I've reblocked, with the same settings, just to get a log entry. Nyttend (talk) 20:56, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

The block information can also be viewed at Special:BlockList/Byxakissaren (for those of us who can't access Special:Block). Matma Rex talk 12:59, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Image Browsing on Mobile

Hi everyone,

The Reader Growth team is starting work on an experiment to test how to make it easier for readers, particularly visual learners, to browse and discover images and other multimedia on Wikipedia articles.

We're working on this because of our goal to help new readers find Wikipedia useful and engaging (here in the annual plan), and Community Wishlist requests for improved discovery of media.

Why is this message so long?

Since the Simple Summaries experiment conversations, we’ve been reflecting on how we can better come up with, discuss, and work together on reader-focused work. The Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) talked about this and they made some recommendations for how to improve. If you get a chance, please check out this page where we talk through the changes we plan on making and leave any feedback on the overall process. You’ll see us putting these recommendations into action for this and future projects.  

Why are we working on this?

Wikimedia’s mission is to make knowledge accessible to every human on the planet, which means continuing to figure out how Wikipedia can be useful to new people just starting to visit it. Unfortunately, our recent data shows that over time, a significantly smaller percentage of internet users are visiting Wikipedia and relying on it as their primary source of knowledge, even as internet usage worldwide increases. To address this, we want to experiment with ways that help new generations of readers find Wikipedia useful, return frequently, and eventually become the editors we need to keep the projects healthy.

Many of these new readers are visual learners who rely on images and multimedia to learn; in surveys of global internet users that WMF conducts periodically, “more images/photos” is the most asked-for improvement to Wikipedia (slide 53). While other platforms have adapted to the shift toward visual learning, Wikipedia has vast amounts of visual content that could be made easier for readers to see. Making it easier to explore the images that are already in Wikipedia articles could make learning on Wikipedia more engaging and encourage new readers to come back more frequently, with some of them eventually becoming the editors of the future.

What idea are we testing?

We want to try out ways for readers who are most interested in images to see and navigate them directly, without distracting from the text of the article.  

What stage is this project in?

Right now, this project is in Phase 0 / Phase 1 (exploration and early experiment design). That means nothing is being launched yet. We are gathering input and sharing early designs to help shape an upcoming small-scale A/B test, in which we’ll decide whether the idea is worth any further investment.

What is the timeline?

We want to spend September and October discussing the idea and building a simple version of a new image discovery feature. Then, we hope to A/B test this version with a small group of readers (about 0.1%) starting in late October and ending four weeks later. We’ll measure whether people engage with the feature and whether they visit Wikipedia more often. If we see positive results, in November and December, we’ll share the results of this A/B test and decide together whether to proceed and what changes to make if we do.

What does the experiment include?

We are designing the experiment to give us data on the following ideas for this feature:

• A more intuitive way to begin looking at the images in an article on the mobile website
• Easier connection from images back to the text – an easy way for readers to go between looking at the image and looking at where the image is in the article
• Simplified exploration of more images – allowing readers to see images for the same article for other wikis if interested

Our current thinking for the A/B test is to build an early version of the feature for the mobile website and show it to 0.1% of all readers that explores the ideas above. We will also provide a url parameter that will allow communities to directly see the feature and provide feedback as well.  

This feature would include a gallery at the top of articles showing all the images from the article. Tapping on any image would open a browsing experience with more details, the image caption, and options to view it on Commons (if available). Readers would also be able to switch back to where the image appears within the article. At the bottom of this experience, readers will be able to view images selected by editors for the same article in other Wikipedias. Since this work is still experimental, we expect to refine and adjust this idea based on your feedback.  

Mock-ups:

This feature hasn’t been built yet, so this is a mock up of how it might work, shown in an animated gif.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:New_images_flow.gif

What input are we looking for from you?

1. We’re interested in showing images from other Wikipedias and Wikidata which editors have chosen for the same article on those wikis. For example, on smaller projects, this will allow them to see images from larger wikis, such as English Wikipedia, without switching wikis. In what ways might this feature change how readers interact with images in an article? How do you think these images could appear within the experience?
2. We know that some articles contain sensitive images, and it might worsen the reader experience if those images are given greater prominence. How do you think we should approach sensitive images? In initial conversations with communities on Discord, community members suggested using the notpageimage class for exclusion, as well as respecting any other exclusions Mediaviewer has. Thoughts on this?
3. We know editors have thought carefully about image placement on articles, including which feature most prominently at the top of the page. How can we make sure that any feature that raises the prominence of images doesn’t alter the integrity of the article as the editors made it?
4. Any other thoughts around the project or the mock-ups above? What are other aspects of images and image browsing that you think a brand new Wikipedia reader might find useful? Are there other pieces of this project from a contributor perspective that you think we should be aware of?

For more info on our research, mock-ups, and other details, see our project page.

Thank you! EBlackorby-WMF (talk) 16:18, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Re item 1 above, if editors are encouraged to add images to articles, I suspect that we will see more violations of WP:NFCCP and of WP:NFLISTS, especially if that policy and that guideline are not enforced at other Wikipedias. And re item 3, we already have links to images on Commons from the bottom of many articles; maybe the {{Commons category-inline}} template and its siblings could be enhanced to actually show images rather than just link to them. Showing images from other Wikipedias without checking their licensing will probably lead to copyright issues. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:49, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for leaving us your thoughts, @Jonesey95! I like your idea about showing Commons images directly, I'll bring it up with the team. For this version, we held off on pulling images directly from Commons since we assumed not all of them would be immediately relevant to the article (or at least as relevant as an image selected for the same article on another wiki), but it’s definitely something we could rethink as we move forward. From your perspective, do you think those Commons images would generally be relevant/interesting to explore through in this context? In terms of licensing, thanks for the reminder - we'll definitely pull in some of the legal team to make sure there isn't anything we're missing on that front. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 08:26, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

I don't know if the Commons images would be relevant. It sounds like you are willing to experiment, though. I do notice that Frank Lloyd Wright has an automatic link to "Wikimedia Commons" that goes to commons:Frank Lloyd Wright, which "is a gallery page containing specially selected image and media files. They have been chosen as highlights of a particular topic, but do not represent the full range of files that are available on Commons". The "Wikimedia Commons has media related to Frank Lloyd Wright" link at the bottom of the page goes to commons:Category:Frank Lloyd Wright, which is kind of a mess. It looks like the former, which is curated, might be a good choice. Using images from other Wikipedias rather than Commons seems quite likely to cause copyright issues here on the English Wikipedia. – Jonesey95 (talk) 11:11, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

If the premise is to target "visual learners", you should read Visual learning#Lack of evidence. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:31, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

@Ahecht I think visual learning is a misnomer in this context, I think the team is planning on targeting trends where we see a lot of visitors gravitate towards visual media. Sohom (talk) 22:01, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

How will this cope with cross project image vandalism? If adding an image in one project then gets in shown on another project, this seems like a likely vector to inject image vandalism. Small projects may pack lack the resources to deal with such issues in a timely manner. Also how would a project go about excluding images it thinks are inappropriate, or is this simply forcing image choice on them? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:54, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

@ActivelyDisinterested, Regarding the two point I think the team recognizes this as a challenge and wants ideas on how this can be mitigated! Sohom (talk) 22:04, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Yes, like @Sohom Datta mentioned, this is definitely something we’d want to build out and discuss further! @ActivelyDisinterested, I'm curious if you have any thoughts and ideas on this specifically? Right now, we plan on respecting editor choices to not include images in MediaViewer, so those already wouldn't appear in the carousel. That said, those choices would come from the wiki where the image is originally from, not the one displaying it, which doesn't fully cover your concern. We’d also explicitly mark where the image is coming from (by adding “from X Wikipedia” under the image) to set the expectation for readers that the decision to include it wasn't made locally.

Another idea we’ve floated is to make this section be opt-in only by adding some explicit “see images from other Wikis” button or link that give people the decision on whether to see these images or not. Or, we could have some sort of direct way for editors to remove an image they find inappropriate. Curious if you have other thoughts/ideas on this! OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 08:36, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

I would suggest this is optin. My concern is that the burden of patrolling images for wikis with small user bases is going to be unsustainable. Even for English Wikipedia patrolling this will be problematic, having editors from one wiki going to another wiki to correct vandalism is problematic especially when it's a much larger wiki enforcing policy on a smaller wiki. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:01, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

@ActivelyDisinterested "pack the resources " --> "lack the resources", I presume? David10244 (talk) 00:18, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for spotting that, corrected now. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 00:20, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Generally, the it is weird to read about visual learning etc. without acknowledgement that this site is designed to replicate an encyclopaedia. That is, it is designed with a particular mode of learning in mind. We should experiment with new ideas, but changing the premise of the project to attract new editors to that new premise does not help the original premise. That said, on the experiment, Re question 1, this seems likely a risky idea for other wikis to en.wiki given how much discussion there can sometimes be on ensuring that our images are useful and neutral. Philosophically this takes editorial decisions out of en.wiki and into projects en.wiki has no control over. Re question 2, neither en.wiki nor Commons has ever found consensus to or even a practical way to generate effective image filters, it seems unlikely to be worth the effort to invent a new class that somehow editors will need to decide to apply for images that are selected because they appear in the article anyway. Re question 3, it would have to be made clear that the image wheel is not part of the article. I'm not sure if the current mockup does this, as it looks like the image gallery replaces the lead image and/or infobox. Re question 4, I am not sure why a brand new user would want to go to the Commons page. Commons pages look like slightly different versions of other wiki file pages, and I'm not sure readers would want to be on our file pages either. If this wants to be useful, better to directly show relevant Commons categories that can be clicked through to. CMD (talk) 02:49, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

CMD, I wonder if it would be more in the goal of the project to surface "related images" (like say parts of a diagram or the skyline of a city) to draw users to those specific parts of the content. I'm pretty sure what is being built here is a abridged version of mediaviewer that does not immediately channel folks into commons. Wrt to your point of there never having been consensus about hiding specific images, I'm pretty sure there are existing mechanisms inside mw:Extension:PageImage that are already used to keep non-free images out of image previews, I think the team is hinting at using something similar (or even community heuristics like looking at the licensing data) to pick appropriate images. Sohom (talk) 04:24, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

I think they want the upper gallery images (is there a shorter name? wheel images?) to link to specific points in the article, which makes it like a second ToC. The Commons part is a response to "Tapping on any image would open a browsing experience with more details, the image caption, and options to view it on Commons (if available)". Hiding images by licence is possible, but I have significant doubt "sensitive images" refers to licences. CMD (talk) 04:43, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

Carousel maybe (but this doesn't fit that description since it is static)? It doesn't sound like a half bad idea to have a more visual way of navigatingsections through images (especially if the text appears below the image once the image is clicked on). Honestly, it might pique peeps curiosity about content further down in the article.

With respect to sensitive images I think the developers were talking about re-purposing features like mw:Extension:PageImages#Can_I_exclude_certain_page_images? where a CSS class prevents a image from appearing as a page image in the preview. I'm honestly not sure how widely it is used but something like that could help editors curate against specific images (if there is a local consensus on a page to not include a particular image). From what I remember, the initial proposal didn't have a "sensitive image" rider, it was added after there was feedback on discord that such a mechanism would be needed in some cases. Sohom (talk) 05:03, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

There are existing mechanisms for individual accounts to block specific images in articles, I assume such functionality would be replicated for the static carousel. However, any attempt to create a wiki-wide list of images is based on past experience not going to gain consensus here or on Commons. I don't know much about other wikis, but it seems reasonable for the developers to be aware of what the effort invested into such a tool is likely to go unused here. CMD (talk) 12:55, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

@Sohom Datta Users can opt to hide images of Mohammed; I predict that's what is meant by "sensitive images". David10244 (talk) 00:21, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

That gif file of adding essentially a scrolling gallery to an article is probably against Manual of style. I do not see it becoming used.

I have the following ideas:

1. Change Wikimedia commons link in sidebar to "Wikimedia Commons (multimedia)". It is not obvious to newcomers that it hosts multimedia content.
2. Add a read section link to every section in every article. We allready have mw:Extension:Phonos which can read text. This is mainly for people with perfectly fine vision that would like an audio version, for example they might be multitasking. Blind or half blind people just use screen readers, this feature is not useful to them.
3. Auto generate slideshows of pictures and audio. It would read an article section with mw:Extension:Phonos and switch out images as they appear in the text. I write slideshow, not video, because the rendering time alone of the video would become a hardware issue.

Snævar (talk) 03:23, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

This feature would include a gallery at the top of articles showing all the images from the article - these will include alt-text, right? Sapphaline (talk) 07:09, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

Hi @Sapphaline - thanks for the question! Yes, we'll be including alt-text for the images. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 14:32, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-40

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

Weekly highlight

• A major software upgrade has been made to Phabricator. The update introduces performance improvements, a refreshed search interface, enhancements to Maniphest task search, updates to user profile pages and project workboards, new Herald automation features, as well as general text input, mobile experience improvements and more. [1]

Updates for editors

• The Community Tech team will release the new Community Wishlist extension on October 1, that will improve the way wishes will be submitted. The new extension will allow users to add tags to their wishes to better categorise them, and (in a future iteration) to filter them by status, tags and focus areas. It will also be possible to support individual wishes again, as requested by the community in many instances. The old system will be retired. There will be a brief period of downtime while the extension is deployed and wishes are migrated to the new system. You can read more about this in the latest update or you can consult the current documentation on MediaWiki.
• As announced on Diff blog, the production trial of the hCaptcha service for bot detection has begun. The trial is currently using hCaptcha to protect account creation on Chinese, Persian, Portuguese, Indonesian, Japanese, and Turkish Wikipedias, where it will replace our existing CAPTCHA (FancyCaptcha). The goal with the trial is to better block bots while also improving usability and accessibility for users who encounter CAPTCHA challenges.
• The CampaignEvents extension has been deployed to Wikimedia Commons. The extension makes it easier to organize and participate in collaborative activities, like edit-a-thons and WikiProjects, on the wikis. On Commons, anyone who is a registered user can use it as an event participant. To use it as an organizer, someone needs to have the event organizer right.
• Sub-referencing, a new feature to re-use references with different details has been released to German Wikipedia. You can test the feature on testwiki or on betawiki as well. Please share your thoughts on using templates in sub-references or volunteer to become a pilot wiki.
• On wikis using the Mentorship system, communities can now opt experienced editors out of Mentorship through Special:CommunityConfiguration/Mentorship. Within this setting, communities may define thresholds, based on edit count and account age, to decide when an editor is considered experienced enough to no longer receive Mentorship. [2]
• The Editing Team and the Machine Learning Team are working on a new check for newcomers: Tone check. Using a prediction model, this check will encourage editors to improve the tone of their edits, using artificial intelligence. We invite volunteers to review the first version of the Tone language model for the following languages: Arabic, Czech, German, Hebrew, Indonesian, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Chinese, Farsi, Italian, Norwegian, Romanian and Latvian. Users from these wikis interested in reviewing this model are invited to sign up at MediaWiki.org. The deadline to sign up is on October 3, which will be the start date of the test.
• The rollout of multiblocks had the side effect that non-active block logs may have been shown on Special:Contributions and on blocked users' user and user_talk pages. This issue will be fully resolved in a few days. As part of the fix, messages prefixed with sp-contributions-blocked-notice will be removed and replaced with those prefixed with blocked-notice-logextract in a few weeks. Please help translate the new messages and update any local overrides if needed.
• There was a bug with links added using visual editor if they included characters such as [ ] | after the fragment identifier (#). They were not encoded properly creating an incorrect link. This has been fixed. [3]
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikiquote in Malay (q:ms:) [4]
• View all 21 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the User Info Card now displays currently active global lock/blocks. [5]

Updates for technical contributors

• Later this week, editors using Lua modules will be able to use the mw.title.newBatch function to look up the existence of up to 25 pages at once, in a way that only increases the expensive function count once.
• A new Unsupported Tools Working Group has been formed as part of ongoing efforts to collectively determine technical work priorities, similar to the Product & Technology Advisory Council (PTAC). The working group will help prioritize and review requests for support of unmaintained extensions, gadgets, bots, and tools. For the first cycle, the group will be prioritizing an unsupported Wikimedia Commons tool.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:48, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

Download as PDF

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T405957
Resolved

Hello. When I'm viewing an article and I do Tools --> Download as PDF and then click Download, it says "Bad Request", and the PDF is not created. Is this a known issue, and if yes, is there a timeline for fixing it? (If it makes any difference, I'm on a Windows 11 PC, using Firefox.) — Mudwater ^(Talk) 21:45, 29 September 2025 (UTC)

It has been filed as T405957, but that's all I know. Matma Rex talk 03:24, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

• The bug has been resolved. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:22, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

Excellent. Thanks! — Mudwater ^(Talk) 23:11, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

Wayback archives problem

See this. Some old archives are not viewable, instead they redirect to the homepage. Anyone know what's wrong with Wayback? Kailash29792 (talk) 05:04, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

That's a link to archive.today, it tried to capture this weird URL https://web.archive.org/web/20151221051623//web/20151221051623/https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/tamil/movie-reviews/thangamagan/movie-review/50235055.cms that does indeed redirect to the Wayback homepage, as it probably should when it gets garbagey URLs. The correct Wayback URL is https://web.archive.org/web/20151221051623/https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/tamil/movie-reviews/thangamagan/movie-review/50235055.cms -- GreenC 05:19, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

• BTW if you are attempting to double-up archives ie. an archive.today capture of a Wayback capture .. this is not recommended, an unnecessary complication that can cause trouble with tools and bots. Instead make a capture of the original URL at each service. If one service is ever no longer available, it can be replaced with the other service. -- GreenC 05:25, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

  I tried accessing through a different way, and the intended archive opened. This may be closed. Kailash29792 (talk) 05:35, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

  @Kailash29792, I have been seeing this too. What worked? JayCubby 19:01, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

  If the original link is still working I archive it, access it and go to earlier archives using the back arrow button. Kailash29792 (talk) 02:37, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

regex timeout should give better error message

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T406018

When a regex search times out, it displays a message saying "A warning has occurred while searching: The regex search timed out, so only partial results are available. Try simplifying your regular expression to get complete results." That's fine, but it would be helpful to also provide some estimate of how complete the search was. For example, right now there are 7,066,306 articles in English Wikipedia. If the search was in article space and managed to get through 1,234,567 articles before timing out, it could report something like "1,234,567 of 7,066,306 pages (17.47%) searched before timeout." —Anomalocaris (talk) 07:37, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

That isn't something we can fix here, you may create a feature request for this enhancement. Here is a direct link: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/task/edit/form/102/?tag=discovery-search — xaosflux ^Talk 10:21, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

Xaosflux: I did it at T406018. I suppose the format isn't exactly by the book, but hopefully the idea has been transmitted to the right people. —Anomalocaris (talk) 10:54, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

Seems fine, developers can expand it more. Starting with a "user story" is generally a good way to start a feature request. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:37, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

#if not working

What did I mess up at line 30? ({{#if: {{{lang|{{{language|}}}}}}...) Sapphaline (talk) 08:46, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

This refers to recent edits at Template:Tweet/sandbox. Where is there a testcase showing the problem? What is the problem? That is, what tells you that #if is not working? Johnuniq (talk) 09:15, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

Template:Tweet/testcases#if-testcase. Sapphaline (talk) 09:38, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

Sapphaline, you removed {{langx}} but didn't remove the closing braces at the end of {{{text|}}}{{{embed|}}}}}. — Qwerfjkltalk 10:57, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

Tysm!! Sapphaline (talk) 11:04, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

References in module testcase

Is there a way to use a <ref> tag in a Module:UnitTests? I’ve got a case running at Module:Person date/testcases but it appears that every time <ref> is called a unique ref id is created. Is there some way to bypass this or can I do a comparison with a regex? —Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 21:08, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

There's a feature in that module called stripmarker that does just that for certain tests. Aidan9382 _(talk) 21:36, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

Fantastic! Thank you!!! Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 21:39, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

Bug

I have Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) bookmarked but its not showing up on my watchlist and I am not going to register an account on phabricator so hopefully someone can report this. Logoshimpo (talk) 03:35, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

It has been miraculous fixed. Logoshimpo (talk) 03:37, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

cmbox migration

A change to how {{cmbox}} is implemented to support mobile resolutions better is occurring soon. It may cause some temporary display weirdness. Further information is available at Module talk:Message box § cmbox migration. Izno (talk) 21:41, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Feedback request and next steps on draft "history of place" Infobox

Hello,

I’ve drafted a new infobox in my userspace, aimed at *“History of …”* articles (for example, History of Suffolk). At the moment there isn’t a dedicated template for this kind of page, and most use none or borrow {{Infobox English county}}, which isn’t quite appropriate.

Sandbox: User:JASpencer/Template:Infobox history of place Example usage: User:JASpencer/History of Suffolk

Design goals:

• Build on {{Infobox}}, hide unused rows dynamically.
• Parameters kept minimal: `location`, `earliest_evidence`, `periods`, `key_sites`, `notable_events`, etc.
• Avoid duplication with geographical infoboxes.
• MOS-compliant (lowercase snake_case, no “thumb” for images, optional rows).

I would really value feedback from more technically experienced template editors on:

• Whether the code structure is sound (ParserFunctions, image handling, title line, etc.).
• Any improvements or pitfalls to consider before proposing wider use.
• Whether this should stay as a standalone template or be a wrapper around an existing one.
• What do I do after this to get it able to be used in mainspace articles - this is all quite new to me

Many thanks in advance!

–– JASpencer (talk) 05:40, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

I see no issues whatsoever, except for background:#f6f6f6 style in headerstyle parameter, which should've been background:#f8f9fa if you wanted the first header's background color to match with the background color of the rest of the infobox; I fixed that. Sapphaline (talk) 09:11, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

There is no point to make the header color match the background. I believe the style was intended to be different. It's just not a good color to pick if so. Izno (talk) 16:04, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

I would have thought that the best place to discuss the design of these would be Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:56, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

I think it would have a much wider application than the UK. Donald Albury 22:51, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia: namespace bug

I have just had several failed attempts to edit the tea house and this page, including time-outs with no response, a 503 error, and database errors.

I'm on mobile so Phabricator isn't an option for me at the moment. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:52, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Now at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T406208 -- Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:25, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Now resolved. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:34, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Cascading protection bug with link-formatting templates

In principle, Wikipedia:Cascading protection should mean that any pages transcluded on the protected page are also protected (and any pages transcluded onto them, and so on down the chain).

RMS Queen Mary and HMS Curacoa (D41) are linked from Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/October 2, which is cascade-protected as it is on the main page today. However, those articles showed up as cascade protected - no non-admins were able to edit them. This did not happen with any other linked items and after some investigation it seems that the problem is in the use of the {{RMS}} and {{HMS}} formatting templates - this edit by @Queen of Hearts removed the templates and thus removed the protection (thanks!).

I'm guessing the issue is going to be common to all ship prefix templates and probably ultimately in Module:WPSHIPS utilities - there's something in there that means the underlying article gets treated as transcluded - but it is way beyond my technical expertise & so I have no idea what it might be. Thought it would be worth reporting it here in case it shows up with other seemingly-innocuous templates, though. Andrew Gray (talk) 19:52, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing that lines 492–495 are the cause. I no longer remember why that snippet of code was added; perhaps because of: Template talk:Ship § Redirects to sections?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:42, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

That seems likely. If you change the code to check isRedirect before calling redirectTarget, it should avoid the "transclusion". Anomie⚔ 23:35, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

many thanks both! If it was only added a year ago that might explain why we've not noticed the cascading issues before Andrew Gray (talk) 09:06, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

I have noticed several problems with Images and Thumbnails across wikipedia.

The images either appear blank until you click on them, or they say sorry the file cannot be displayed. This seems to be a technical issue. Sometimes if I click on image details the image will appear on it's own page or will not.

I use chrome.

List of wars involving the United States in the 20th century Historyguy1138 (talk) 14:11, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Most likely this is because of the godawful amount of images (650) that that page is using (every flag is an image). As there is a rate limit of the amount of requests you are allowed to to make within a certain timeframe, if you load this page you have to make 650 requests to the server, and you ikely will run into this limit and be blocked from viewing more images. Best advise i can give, is to stop using all these flags. This page also uses color to give meaning to tablecells, which is an accessibility/MoS violation and should be rewritten to be done in another way. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:41, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

It is actually a little surprising though, those flag icons are used all over Wikipedia, all in the same size, so they should be cached, and hence people should not hit the rate limit. Bawolff (talk) 11:08, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

This was just an example. Because the page has several images. There are pages I have found that only has 3 images and they don't load either, Historyguy1138 (talk) 14:21, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

"Fallback" skin

Does anyone know what the use case of this skin is? Sapphaline (talk) 16:58, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

phab:T70332. Izno (talk) 17:03, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

Lua tonumber

Experiment shows:

• In Lua 5.1 (on a standalone computer), tonumber('nan') is nil because 'nan' is a non-numeric string.
• In Scribunto Lua, tonumber('nan') and mw.getContentLanguage():parseFormattedNumber('nan') give the number NaN.

Any ideas on why this occurs, or whether it is desirable?

I encountered this in a couple of articles where "NaN" was given as the value for a field in an infobox. That field is passed to {{convert}}. That gave error "convert: number overflow" because convert optimistically tests the value with tonumber on the principle that it will work almost all the time. Convert expects the result to be nil if the value parameter was not a number. Actually, because of the way convert is called for the infobox in question, convert gets the number NaN, not the string "nan". That happens because parseFormattedNumber is called before convert. I'll dream up some workaround (or fix the article wikitext), but why is this happening? Johnuniq (talk) 06:25, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

When i tested with lua 5.1.5 on a standalone computer, the behaviour of tonumber('nan') was the same as scribunto. Bawolff (talk) 11:13, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Oh. Thanks. On my old system (Lua installed when Scribunto was first developed), lua -v shows 5.1.4. That means code using n = tonumber(s) shouldn't assume n is a usable number just because it is not nil. I wonder if there is any other magic text apart from "nan". OTOH this is the first time this problem has arisen with convert in the last 12 years so a workaround in the module to avoid it might not be worthwhile. Johnuniq (talk) 11:43, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Depends what you mean by "usable". There's "inf", as well as "-nan" and "-inf". "-0" produces a negative zero. It will also recognize hexadecimal notation like "0xff", and exponential notation like "6.022e23". Anomie⚔ 13:41, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

To me, "usable" means does not lead to convert having a problem :) If tonumber gives nil, convert then looks for weird things like fractions. At one point, it searches the tostring text for "n" to determine if it is one of those special cases you mentioned. Johnuniq (talk) 00:46, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

NaN should never be used as the input value for any calculation or formula; it is only 'valid' as the output from calculations, such as a division by zero. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:31, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Home page

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T406413

Who can create Special:Home_page, as a redirect to Special:Homepage? Do we need a Phabricator ticket to do so? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:53, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Almost certainly, unless there's some configuration page lying around. — Qwerfjkltalk 13:58, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

We could test for the page name in MediaWiki:Nospecialpagetext and use {{Did you mean box}}. This cannot make an actual redirect. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:10, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Special:Homepage is part of the GrowthExperiments extension. Its aliases are defined here. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 15:54, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Timzine

Hi, can somebody fix ref 3, it's a PDF url causing an issue. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:22, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

@Dr. Blofeld: Seems something went wrong when you copied the URL. Spaces need to be replaced by %20. It works now. —Kusma (talk) 15:29, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

Why isn't this talk page archiving?...

Talk:Wounded Knee Massacre.

Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 03:16, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

The local configuration of User:MiszaBot/config sets no value of minthreadstoarchive. The default of that lever is 2. You do not have 2 threads that meet the criteria (30 days old) to archive. Izno (talk) 05:10, 5 October 2025 (UTC)