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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Identifying and Removing Predatory Sources

Hey everyone, I was wondering if there are any tools available that could help identify citations that link to PDFs, as many predatory journals often use direct PDF links instead of proper journal indexing. While manually checking for predatory sources is possible, a tool to automate or streamline this process would be really useful. This is a consistent problem in wikipedia, as many articles are out there with almost all predatory sources. For instance, do look at Mizo names. After I removed all the predatory sources, there is only one citation left.

I understand that Special:Linksearch can be used to find citations linking to specific domains, which is helpful for flagging known predatory journals. However, I don’t think there’s currently a way to search for all citations that link to PDFs in general.

Would it be possible to implement such a search function, or has anyone come across a method to filter citations by file type? If not, I’d like to discuss whether this is something that could be proposed at WP:VPT or WP:RSN. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! — Flyingphoenixchips (talk) 01:29, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

@Flyingphoenixchips: You should check out @Novem Linguae:'s script User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/CiteHighlighter which could help with this task. Polygnotus (talk) 01:49, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Do you know any other predatory journals? Searching for insource:ijnrd.org and insource:ijsr.net yields 64 results. Polygnotus (talk) 01:52, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Really cool to say the least. Just downloaded it. There are many predatory journals out there, and as someone working in academia I can for sure say that 99% of times, the citations that leads to pdf of a Journal, is most definitely predatory. This is why I was hoping to search for a tool, that can search the database of wikipedia, to find all citations that link to a pdf. Yes, there are many other predatory journals like http://www.ijst.co.in/ https://tlhjournal.com/ https://ijssrr.com/journal and https://www.mkscienceset.com/. There are many more besides these, and many more that I might not be aware of. This is partly the reason I am interested in this. I did a few clean up of ijnrd.org

But yea the script you shared is quite cool :) installed it Flyingphoenixchips (talk) 02:03, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

@Flyingphoenixchips I don't know how nerdy you are, but AutoWikiBrowser includes a database scanner and I don't think you even need AWB permission to use it. I also have a tool that can search through the dump. Polygnotus (talk) 02:09, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Could you share the link for it. Much appreciated. Flyingphoenixchips (talk) 02:10, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

WP:AWB. Polygnotus (talk) 02:11, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks will have a look :) Flyingphoenixchips (talk) 02:12, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

@Flyingphoenixchips The scanner is explained here. If you want someone else to do it you can ask at WP:AWBREQ. Polygnotus (talk) 02:13, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

@Flyingphoenixchips I was too lazy to download a new dump so I used one that I had laying around. A text file containing just the articlename and then the PDF URL is 373MB. There are 3.257.740 URLs that end in .pdf, if you only search articles and only inside ref tags. Polygnotus (talk) 04:27, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Here is the first MB: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Polygnotus/Flyingphoenixchips&action=edit Polygnotus (talk) 04:34, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Note that there is also a WP:BLACKLIST which prevents future additions but does not work retroactively. Polygnotus (talk) 05:18, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Hm, I restricted it to only articles that contain "India" and only references that contain ".pdf" and I get 96.847 results (roughly a 10mb file) most of which are fine. Polygnotus (talk) 14:17, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Hmm interesting, did you happen to notice links to dubious journals? Flyingphoenixchips (talk) 02:24, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

@Flyingphoenixchips No. You can have a look. This list excludes all articles that do not have a category whose name contains the word "India" and of those it takes the references that contain ".pdf"

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Polygnotus/e437895&action=edit Polygnotus (talk) 02:30, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

I see thanks for sharing Flyingphoenixchips (talk) 02:33, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Flyingphoenixchips, can you elaborate on this:

I can for sure say that 99% of times, the citations that leads to pdf of a Journal, is most definitely predatory.

That seems dubious, unless you think that, say, all of these citations from Wikipedia articles hosted by JSTOR are all from predatory journals. Citations from the top of that list include articles from: American Historical Review, American Literature, Annual Reports of the Dante Society, Proceedings of the New York State Historical Association, Urban Studies, Science & Society, PMLA, Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, American Journal of Sociology, and Political Science Quarterly. I couldn't find any that seemed likely to be from a predatory journal before I stopped looking. Or did I miss your meaning? Mathglot (talk) 21:29, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

@Mathglot I searched through the dump for them and my conclusion is that that is not an efficient way of finding predatory journals (even in articles related to India). So we should continue with our approach of searching for the name or domain of the journals.

There appears to be a (somewhat outdated) list here: https://ugccare.unipune.ac.in/apps1/home/index that is comparable to Beall's List. I have mentioned the domains listed in this thread over at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Predatory(?)_journals Polygnotus (talk) 21:38, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

This is valid too. Honestly we can do this, but the problem is- there are so many predatory journals out there, that it will be hard keeping track of all the domains. Flyingphoenixchips (talk) 02:26, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

@Flyingphoenixchips Problem is, there are even more valid links to .pdf files. So keeping track of the domains is the only option we have. Polygnotus (talk) 02:31, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

True Flyingphoenixchips (talk) 02:32, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

What I meant by this, was 100% of the times, predatory journals do not have a doi index, and thus whenever they are cited in Wikipedia, they are cited in the form of a pdf. Does it mean all pdfs are unreliable? Of course no! I was trying to find patterns in order to identify predatory journals, and this was one thing that I had noticed. This is why I brought it up, as a possible method to search for predatory journals Flyingphoenixchips (talk) 02:24, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Can you contact the people behind https://ugccare.unipune.ac.in/apps1/home/index and ask if we can have their list? https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://ugccare.unipune.ac.in/apps1/home/index Polygnotus (talk) 02:33, 7 April 2025 (UTC) Polygnotus (talk) 02:33, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

https://ugccare.unipune.ac.in/Apps1/User/lr/login

you should be able to access their list, after making an account here. Also not sure if this would help as well, since UGC has been used by predatory publishers to get legitimacy most of the times. Flyingphoenixchips (talk) 02:35, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

@Flyingphoenixchips I cannot even open that site, it just keeps loading forever. We need an Indian equivalent of Beall's List. Polygnotus (talk) 02:36, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

I am not sure if users outside India can access it. I am currently not in the country as well, but since I had made an account here, maybe thats why I still have he access. Well good point. Let me see if I can work on building such a site. Would you be willing to help? Lemme try posting this in Wikiproject:India Flyingphoenixchips (talk) 02:41, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

I am willing to help, but not able, because I know nothing about predatory publishers in India. Posting in Wikiproject:India is a good idea, there may be more people who know about these things. Polygnotus (talk) 02:44, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Noted :) Flyingphoenixchips (talk) 02:45, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

It can depend on the subject area, but as someone who has been in the academic publishing business for decades as author, editor, and technical manager, I strongly disagree that the absence of a doi is an indicator of being predatory. Getting doi coverage for a journal involves no quality-related test at all. It is just for the asking plus a small fee. The total cost for a whole year of articles is about 1/10 of the typical page charge for one article. It is actually journals which have no cash flow at all which are most likely to not have dois, and they are the least likely to be predatory. Conversely, dois are one cheap way that predatory journals use to make themselves look legit. Zero^talk 10:05, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

@Flyingphoenixchips: As another person who has been involved in academic publishing for decades (as an author and peer reviewer), I agree with Zero's statement above. There are lots of older or smaller independent journals that are completely legitimate and peer reviewed but do not have DOIs or similar registrations. This is especially true of niche zoological and botanical journals. I'm curious how you are distinguishing between those and predatory journals. Nosferattus (talk) 00:13, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

I agree with both of you! As of now, I was evaluating predatory journals by visiting their website and seeing how they advertised themselves. A journal that promises turn around of less than a week, is definitely predatory. It can also be determined by looking at the quality of the papers published in itself. @Nosferattus Flyingphoenixchips (talk) 18:10, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

As someone that's dealt with predatory journals, the best way to find them used on Wikipedia is probably WP:CITEWATCH (pages 2+ especially, page 1 has a lot of corner cases). I also maintain the WP:UPSD script. That said

1. Lack of DOI, especially for new journals published after 2000, is a fairly strong sign that a journal might be predatory. Older journals without DOIs just might not have been online and stopped publishing. Of course plenty of exceptions exist.
2. Plenty of predatory journals have DOIs. When that's the case, it's often with a DOI prefix over 10.10000+/.... Of course plenty of exceptions exist. OMICS for example, has a DOI prefix of 10.4172/...
3. Having a PDF is completely irrelevant either way.

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:15, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Dead wayback link

Hello, does anyone know how to access the article at [1]? The first snapshot, specifically June 21, 2011, is cited on an article, but if it loaded once it doesn't now. Thanks, CMD (talk) 06:48, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

So that people don't waste their time: insource:NewsID=72917. Polygnotus (talk) 14:18, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

That source is as good as dead, because WebArchive seems to have changed its syntax so that the source doesn't show and archive.today redirects to the main page. You can try contacting the WebArchive but I'd simply consider some other sources Szmenderowiecki (talk) 15:00, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, a shame but I suppose it is what it is. CMD (talk) 15:19, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

One would think that the article in question ought to be listed in the Express archive for the date claimed in the article, but I don't see an obvious title in that list although in theory, it has to be there, so perhaps it's buried in an article about something else? Sufficient sleuthing through that list might turn it up, but that's a lot of effort for an uncertain result about one citation. Mathglot (talk) 01:04, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

I agree with both of you! As of now, I was evaluating predatory journals by visiting their website and seeing how they advertised themselves. A journal that promises turn around of less than a week, is definitely predatory. It can also be determined by looking at the quality of the papers published in itself. Flyingphoenixchips (talk) 03:32, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Wrong section? jlwoodwa (talk) 15:48, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Sorry replied in the wrong section 😭 Flyingphoenixchips (talk) 16:52, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Prosesize

Prosesize has stopped working for me, all articles reading as 0b. Have cleared cache and tried through another browser, and in incognito mood. Still all articles showing as 0b. Thanks Hildreth gazzard (talk) 19:54, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

@Hildreth gazzard It works fine for me. I installed it with Preferences → Gadgets → Browsing → Prosesize and then I went to a random article and clicked the "Page size" option in the tools menu and it says:

HTML document size: 143 kB
Prose size (including all HTML code): 5956 B
References (including all HTML code): 9977 B
Wiki text: 23 kB
Prose size (text only): 3312 B (575 words) "readable prose size"
References (text only): 912 B

What browser and device are you using? Do you see an error in the browser console? Polygnotus (talk) 20:00, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I did that, installed it with Preferences → Gadgets → Browsing → Prosesize on an

iphone and it was working fine. It just stopped the last few hours. No error message. It shows HTML document size and Wikitext size, but all other values are blank Hildreth gazzard (talk) 20:16, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

For example: this is what it shows for the Mandarin duck

Document statistics (more information):

HTML document size: 212 kB

Prose size (including all HTML code): 0 B

References (including all HTML code):50 kB

Wiki text: 27 kB

Prose size (text only): 0 B (0 words) "readable prose size"

References (text only): 5751 B Hildreth gazzard (talk) 20:18, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

@Hildreth gazzard You could try User:Polygnotus/Scripts/ProseSize.js Polygnotus (talk) 20:19, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi, I was having the same issue with prosesize (although in my case it's been down for over a year and displays no output at all after freezing). I tried your script and it worked, but would it be possible for the output to be displayed with greater accuracy i.e. the number of bytes instead of just 2 kB or 3 kB? AryKun (talk) 11:47, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

@AryKun Sure, I updated it to show both. Polygnotus (talk) 11:56, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

If you go to User:Hildreth gazzard/common.js and add the following text: {{subst:iusc|User:Polygnotus/Scripts/ProseSize.js}} then you should get a "Calculate prose size" option in the Tools menu. Polygnotus (talk) 20:26, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

The official gadget (MediaWiki:Gadget-Prosesize.js) uses a Toolforge thing under the hood. A request would look like https://prosesize.toolforge.org/api/en.wikipedia.org/Foobar but if that isn't available there is a fallback so I am surprised that it does not work. Polygnotus (talk) 12:22, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Template:Chem generating line breaks

Hi,

the {{chem}} template currently generates HTML that includes line breaks:

<span class="chemf nowrap">CO<span class="nowrap"><span style="display:inline-block;margin-bottom:-0.3em;vertical-align:-0.4em;line-height:1em;font-size:80%;text-align:left"><sup style="font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"></sup><br /><sub style="font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;vertical-align:baseline">2</sub></span></span></span>

So when one copies and pastes from a Wikipedia article into plaintext, one gets results like this (from Naked mole-rat § Metabolism and respiration where I noticed it):

It can live in an atmosphere of 80% CO
2 and 20% oxygen.

That's a bit annoying and surely avoidable, as the {{chem2}} template does not have the same quirk. Could someone who knows what they're doing take a look? Cheers!

- 2A02:560:4D16:1800:9905:C7AA:90CA:BB25 (talk) 16:19, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Generated by Module:Su. Izno (talk) 17:28, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

See Template:Su#Line breaks. — Qwerfjkltalk 17:53, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, both! I looked at the code for both templates, and the difference stems from these two approaches to stacking super- and subscripts, AFAI can tell:

• {{chem}}, via the invoked module
  • generates (without the text formatting) SO<span style="display:inline-block"><sup>2-</sup><br /><sub>4</sub></span>
  • which displays as (with the text formatting) SO²⁻
    ₄
  • and plaintext-pastes as SO2−
4
• {{chem2}}
  • generates SO<span style="display:inline-block"><span style="display:block">2−</span><span style="display:block">4</span></span>
  • which displays as SO2−4
  • and plaintext-pastes as SO2−4

- 2A02:560:4D16:1800:9905:C7AA:90CA:BB25 (talk) 18:53, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Why is {{su}} implemented in a module? The module seems to provide functionality that could be trivially implemented in wikitext. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 21:15, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

See Template talk:Su#Conversion to Lua. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:33, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Active users at Category:User languages

How I can see users from language category that been active in current month? For example, most users at Category:User gsw-4 was active 2-3 or 10 years ago, which is kinda useless information. Eurohunter (talk) 10:46, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Also the same thing but for those who are members of a wikiproject, ideally weighted to those with the most edits. Polygnotus (talk) 12:54, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

This should probably be moved to WP:SCRIPTREQ or, preferably, WP:BOTREQ. Polygnotus (talk) 13:09, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

True, but I have a database query for users who have done edits in the last three months here. Doesn't notice whether have performed logged actions such as issue thanks or blocking. William Avery (talk) 14:10, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

@William Avery I think that usually people want to know "who should I contact" which means that a user with 1 edit who edited 1 second ago is a worse option than a user with 180.000 edits who edited 3 days ago. Polygnotus (talk) 15:49, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

You can use this script. – DreamRimmer (talk) 17:58, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Modern JavaScript is an error?

If you look at for example User:Andrybak/Scripts/Contribs ranger.js then Wikipedia claims that script contains 129 errors.

Is the thing that checks for errors very outdated? It may be JSHint and I don't see any releases post 2022.

If so, can we change the CodeEditor to use something more modern?

I see T250315 so I'll ping @ESanders (WMF):. Polygnotus (talk) 13:05, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Running ESLint is technically possible but quite complex, I'm not sure who will be able to prioritise it in the near future. ESanders (WMF) (talk) 16:27, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

@ESanders (WMF) This is not the worst problem ever™, but it can be quite annoying when messing about with JavaScript because JSHint keeps warning you of errors that do not exist. Is there maybe an alternative to ESLint that is easier to implement? Polygnotus (talk) 18:07, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

It may be (?) related to the fact that what's here signaled are private identifiers, which are added in ECMA2026. — Alien  3
3 3 19:46, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

The most recent version supported is ES 2016, see phab:T381537. Snævar (talk) 07:50, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

If by errors you mean when you go to edit the page, which no one else can, that is strictly identified by the syntax highlighter, which in this case is Ace AFAIK. It simply has not been updated for newer syntaxes yet. (Such issues are relevant when editing CSS as well, e.g. phab:T263852.) The final says on whether a script is valid is the ResourceLoader checker + minifier, for when a script is loaded as a gadget, and your browser.

My understanding, based on conversation with a relevant volunteer dev, is that phab:T250315 is particularly difficult, and that Ace does not provide the necessary APIs so it would be a lot of developer overhead to support something like that.

Ace may be removed in favor of CodeMirror at some date, see e.g. activity with phab:T373711. Izno (talk) 22:20, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Range block calculator?

I used to use this tool to calculate IP ranges for potential blocks, but now I'm getting a 'not found' error. Has it moved, or been replaced with something else, or just died a dignified natural death, does anybody know? Thanks, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:46, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

@Justlettersandnumbers: https://nativeforeigner.com/calc/ GMG^talk 19:49, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

{{IP range calculator}} also exists. Izno (talk) 20:24, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

It looks like the original moved to https://ftools.toolforge.org/general/ip-range-calc.html (and the template that Izno links to has a "See also" link to an alternative at https://galaxybots.toolforge.org/iprangecalculator, and via m:Toolhub there's yet another alternative at https://iprange.toolforge.org/) HTH. Quiddity (talk) 20:29, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-16

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

• Later this week, the default thumbnail size will be increased from 220px to 250px. This changes how pages are shown in all wikis and has been requested by some communities for many years, but wasn't previously possible due to technical limitations. [2]
• File thumbnails are now stored in discrete sizes. If a page specifies a thumbnail size that's not among the standard sizes (20, 40, 60, 120, 250, 330, 500, 960), then MediaWiki will pick the closest larger thumbnail size but will tell the browser to downscale it to the requested size. In these cases, nothing will change visually but users might load slightly larger images. If it doesn't matter which thumbnail size is used in a page, please pick one of the standard sizes to avoid the extra in-browser down-scaling step. [3][4]

Updates for editors

• The Wikimedia Foundation are working on a system called Edge Uniques which will enable A/B testing, help protect against Distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS attacks), and make it easier to understand how many visitors the Wikimedia sites have. This is so that they can more efficiently build tools which help readers, and make it easier for readers to find what they are looking for.
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• "Are you interested in taking a short survey to improve tools used for reviewing or reverting edits on your Wiki?" This question will be asked at 7 wikis starting next week, on Recent Changes and Watchlist pages. The Moderator Tools team wants to know more about activities that involve looking at new edits made to your Wikimedia project, and determining whether they adhere to your project's policies.
• On April 15, the full Wikidata graph will no longer be supported on query.wikidata.org. After this date, scholarly articles will be available through query-scholarly.wikidata.org, while the rest of the data hosted on Wikidata will be available through the query.wikidata.org endpoint. This is part of the scheduled split of the Wikidata Graph, which was announced in September 2024. More information is available on Wikidata.
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• View all 30 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

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MediaWiki message delivery 00:21, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Regarding the first item about the default thumbnail size, please see Wikipedia talk:Image use policy#Displayed image size. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:07, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

AfC templates with wrong timestamp

Normally, {{AfC submission}}'s |ts= takes the form |ts=YYYYMMDDhhmmss. But I've been coming across some drafts that have the ts param in the format generated by ~~~~~ (e.g. "00:00, 1 January 1970 (UTC)"). This shouldn't be happening, and breaks the template.

Does anyone know what is causing this? I wanted to code up a bot to fix all these, but this search only turns up a few results. ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 03:48, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

You can include cases with AFC by making the regex case insensitive with i at the end.[6] I haven't worked out how it might happen. We could ask somebody who did it. @Domagoj Klarić: Do you remember how you made this edit? You may have copied code with subst from somewhere. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:34, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: What I'm noticing is that we have two forms of this "incorrect timestamp" template: One is {{AfC submission|||ts=...}}, which renders a "submitted for review" template, but there's also {{AfC submission|d|ts=...}}, rendering a "submission declined" without a reason. ~ Rusty ^meow ~ 14:53, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

@Rusty Cat Per Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation#Messed up templates, this seems to be caused by people getting instructions on submitting an article from ChatGPT. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:24, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

A technical issue

I’d like to mention an issue I’ve just recently noticed. Not serious, nonetheless inaccurate.

Something seems to be amiss with the algorithm that displays the longest stretch of consecutive days of Wiki editing that we’ve done. For a long time, my count used to be 27. Now it’s 18. This means others’ counts could similarly be affected.

Augnablik (talk) 09:00, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@Augnablik: The information icon at Special:Impact/Augnablik says: "This metric will only reflect editing streaks included in the most recent 1,000 edits." I assume your longer streak became older. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:06, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Oh, then sorry I didn’t notice. But I’m surprised. Not that I really care about this, but it does seem a little odd that the clock is started every X number of days.

I have one more clock-related technical issue to report: there’s a place where the number of years we’ve been Wikipedians is shown, and my count has appeared as 3 years for several months now — even though that won’t actually be till the 2nd or 3rd week of June. Augnablik (talk) 10:40, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@Augnablik: I think the impact data makes a search for the longest streak each time it's viewed and the limit is for performance reasons. Where do you see 3 years? Special:CentralAuth/Augnablik says 2 years. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:01, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

I don't think the number that's shown in regard to my 2nd question has anything to do with performance but just time as a Wiki editor. To answer your question about where I've seen 3 years, I don't recall now exactly where that was ... all that I recall is that it's fairly often. The next time I see it, I can return here and say. Or perhaps another editor will come along and say where that is. Augnablik (talk) 11:39, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

The mobile version of your user page says "Joined 3 years ago": [7]. Matma Rex talk 20:39, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

User:Fsalas87 currently says "Joined 2 years ago" (created 17 October 2022). User:PoDawg42 says 3 years (created 16 October 2022). So the feature rounds to the nearest integer. I think that's OK with the given formulation. It would be different to say an account is 3 years old if it's only 2.5. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:26, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

But PrimeHunter, my account did consistently show me as being 3 years with Wikipedia when it was only 2.5 years — last fall. And now that there are discrepancies between what several different editors see, this makes it more likely that there are bugs in the calculation.

At any rate, I don't think rounding is a good idea for reporting our "Wiki age." Aside from simple accuracy, another reason is that those of you senior editors who help newer editors might at times want to get a clearer idea of the time we've been involved with Wikipedia, irrespective of # of our contributions. Augnablik (talk) 04:25, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

@Augnablik: Your account became 2.5 years old on 15 December 2024. I doubt it rounded to 3 before that. Rounding#Rounding to the nearest integer is a very common rounding method. It's rarely used when we say how old a person is but "Joined 3 years ago" doesn't say "old" or "age", and it doesn't describe a person but an event. I think rounding to nearest integer is OK there. Initially your mobile user page [8] actually says "Joined 15 June 2022" but it's changed by JavaScript after page load. I guess the script makes its own calculation and doesn't look up the number somewhere. It also runs in safemode [9] and at other wikis so a requested change should be at phab: (see WP:PHAB). It could point out that Special:CentralAuth/Augnablik rounds down to 2. I'm OK with either rounding method but they should probably use the same method although I wouldn't call it a bug. The mobile message is made with MediaWiki:Mobile-frontend-joined-years but it's called with 3 for you [10] and not a date or decimal age so we cannot change it locally. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:05, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

I have created phab:T392208: "Mobile user page should round down account age like CentralAuth". PrimeHunter (talk) 10:40, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for that fix, PrimeHunter. I guess I can go on living without the other fix that I was hoping for, as there are other things in the world in greater need of fixing.

As for my recollection of what was shown as my account age some months ago, I can only say that’s what I recall. Memory can, of course, play tricks on us, and I can’t claim infallibility. Now that I’m aware that after 6 months that number will be rounded up 😢, I’ll re-check. Augnablik (talk) 13:10, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Automating argument between template and module, and finding out template name

Hi everyone,

Two questions into one today. Here is my situation.

• I have a module that I can call with {{#invoke:module_name|main|arg1|arg2}} with arg1 being either foo or bar; and
• I want to have two templates calling this module, where:
  • {{template foo|arg}} calls {{#invoke:module_name|main|foo|arg}}, and
  • {{template bar|arg}} calls {{#invoke:module_name|main|bar|arg}}.

So the idea is that each template implicitly provides the module with arg1 without the user having to write it. How do I do that?

Secondly, when I am using the module's functions, what is an easy to get the name of the module that called it? I would use this for error messages.

Thanks! Julius Schwarz (talk) 09:46, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

If I understand what it is that you want to do, you can hard-code foo and bar in the template wikitext as named parameters: |foo=<value> etc – this is probably the simplest. No doubt there are more complex ways to do what I think you want to do.

To get the name of the invoking module: frame:getTitle(); and similarly, to get the name of the calling template: frame:getParent():getTitle().

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:21, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

As TtM said, {{#invoke:module_name|main|foo| {{{arg|}}} }} should work.

If {{{arg}}} is a number of arguments, you can also make use of one or both of the following two tables (mw:Extension:Scribunto/Lua_reference_manual#frame.args):

• local targs = frame:getParent().args --template arguments in template call
• local margs = frame.args --module arguments in #invoke

Ponor (talk) 14:03, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Thank you @Trappist the monk and @Ponor for your help. TtM knows it takes me a bit to get these things :) I have tried and it is not yet working. Here is the template and here is what it gives.. :S Julius Schwarz (talk) 07:28, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

@Julius Schwarz: check this. Ponor (talk) 07:37, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Like magic!! thank you so much! And, if I got this right, we only need to do the {{}} for unnamed arguments, right? Julius Schwarz (talk) 07:41, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

I am not familiar with the module itself. But if there are named params, I'd assume you need to add translations like namedOne={{{namedOne|}}} to the template's code, for all the named ones you need. Make a test case and I'll show you, if needed. Ponor (talk) 08:16, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Just saw your second test case. The module seems smart enough (by calling another module) to get the named params without any mapping. You're good to go! Ponor (talk) 08:34, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes it seems all in order and the examples are working great. Thank you so much! Julius Schwarz (talk) 09:16, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

@Julius Schwarz If it were me, I would just make it so {{template foo|arg}} calls {{#invoke:module_name|foo|arg}} and {{template bar|arg}} calls {{#invoke:module_name|bar|arg}}. p.foo(frame) and p.bar(frame) can just be wrappers that call p.main(type, frame). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:22, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Technical concern about wikis using Wikipedia content.

Where can we report suspicious activity in terms of site using Wikipedia content? There is one site that may be a cybersecurity risk for unsuspecting users. Starlighsky (talk) 22:38, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@Starlighsky Use of Wikipedia trademarks to mislead should be reported to the WMF legal team at legal-tm-viowikimedia.org. Security issues relating to MediaWiki or Wikimedia Foundation infrastructure should be reported to securitywikimedia.org or by using this Phabricator form. General threats to the safety of contributors can be reported to the WMF Trust and Safety team at cawikimedia.org. If you're unsure, feel free to email me and I can help route your concerns. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 23:59, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@Starlighsky: Is this a case of reusing our content without attribution? See Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content and wmf:Wikimedia Foundation Terms of Use. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:46, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

The site is in another language, and I don't know if they are or are not. I want to avoid the site due to the cybersecurity issues that I suspect are on the site. I emailed the issue and the language that the site was written in. Ideally, there is a cybersecurity professional who can look at the site. I discovered the site after a search for a specific topic. I recognized the content as a Wikipedia article, which I can explain later if needed. The site does see it is not affiliated with Wikimedia. That is all I know. Starlighsky (talk) 13:02, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Quarry queries don't run

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T392107

Hi, when I try to run my queries on https://quarry.wmcloud.org/, I get a pop-up message that is very long (which for some reason I can't copy) and eventually a message that states

Error

This web service cannot be reached. Please contact a maintainer of this project.

Maintainers can find troubleshooting instructions from our documentation on Wikitech.

I filed a bug report but I was hoping another editor might have more familiarity with Phab and filing tickets. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:10, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

It looks like this problem might be resolved. But I'll leave it here as a report. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:09, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Why are infobox image sizes huge now?

See Mario Vargas Llosa and Margaret Thatcher, for example. This really isn't an improvement. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 01:30, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

See the weekly highlight above in § Tech News: 2025-16 jlwoodwa (talk) 01:35, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

This is clearly a bug. This change should only affect thumbnails, not infobox images. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 01:36, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

I thought it was for all images. We were having trouble with some images loading because of issues with the thumbnails. The image has to be resized to fit in the infobox. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:02, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

There was no consensus here to increase the default size for all images, only for thumbnails. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 02:13, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

The templates should be updated then, they just follow the default setting. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 08:32, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

For Vargas Llosa, if I am reading the template code at {{infobox writer}} correctly, the image is being assigned the default size of frameless, which renders the image at the default thumbnail size width. That width was just increased from 220px to 250px, per the tech note above, after that change had been requested for many years. I see the image rendering at 250px, which means that things are working as designed. (Here are archive.org snapshots of the pages yesterday, 220px image and today, 250px image.) If you are seeing something that does not appear to be working as designed, please describe it here. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:52, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Also, the RFC from January 2024, linked to above, says This bifurcated discussion finds a strong consensus to increase the default thumbnail size on English Wikipedia to 250px. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:59, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Infobox images are thumbnails, are they not? I had my thumbnail size set to 300px in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering-files for years, and it always affected infoboxes too. Matma Rex talk 21:12, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Some are set to use frameless and some are set to fixed pixel sizes. Some other common infobox graphics, like maps, can't be set to use the reader's thumbnail size preference, so some editors have chosen to use fixed sizes for images to match the width of maps. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:02, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

It is even less of an improvement in the case of non-free images like film posters, which are compressed and consequently lack the clarity and detail necessary for comfortable viewing at this higher resolution. Οἶδα (talk) 09:55, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Please link to an example article. Maybe we need to adjust our maximum acceptable size for non-free images. That would be a discussion for a different page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:52, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Honestly, most of them. Though many are worse than others. I realise this is an issue with the files themself but it remains that this change renders these posters looking worse. Comparing png files like the ones at Boyhood (2014 film), Drugstore Cowboy or Good Will Hunting, which are far crisper, or high-res Commons photos like the ones appearing at M*A*S*H (film) or Seven Samurai, to the jpg at Short Cuts, you should see what I mean. Viewing that thumbnail at the original resolution looks better to my eyes. To a lesser extent, the one at Pulp Fiction. Must it be expanded to fill the infobox? Of course this is my opinion and I am not suggesting any actions. But 250px looks worse to my eyes for most posters. Οἶδα (talk) 22:04, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

I remember predicting this exact situation when the non-free content policy, limiting the size, was made. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:48, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

The Short Cuts poster is 19KB and looks like it has been over-compressed. The previous infobox default was reducing it from 255px to 220px wide, and now it is being reduced to 250px, which highlights the over-compression. Someone needs to upload a better-quality image. The Good Will Hunting image is the same pixel size but is 231KB. That's probably why it looks better. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:02, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

@Jonesey95 Film posters should be resized to 0.1 megapixels, which, for a standard 3:2 poster, means 258x387 (although they generally range from 254x393 to 260x384). We don't need to update the maximum size, but rather set the resizing bot to prefer a width of 250px if the final image is going to be close to that value to avoid unnecessary rescaling. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:38, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

It depends upon the infobox. Some are coded to use a specific size; others are coded for the frameless type, which should read the user's preferences. No infobox should be coded to use the thumb type, because of the extra borders that produces. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:35, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

BTW, i’ve been running with a default of 300px for years now, which is even bigger. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:53, 17 April 2025 (UTC)