Commons:Village pump/Technical/Archive/2019/01

File:Patients in mental institutions 1950-1951.pdf

PDF needs decompressing or down converting to an older format, as currently the tumbnailer can't cope with it. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 10:59, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Move

I tried to move two categories (Category:Images from Wiki Loves Monuments in Light and Category:Images from Wiki Loves Monuments in Pomegranate) but it seems that something is wrong with the template. Hanooz 18:02, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Fixed. But I don’t recommend to rely on such wiki coders for future projects. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 23:11, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. Hanooz 23:19, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

sidebar bug

Category:Guangzhoudong Railway Station, please look at the interwiki left sidebar. Do you see double links to English, Japanese, Polish and Chinese?--Roy17 (talk) 01:42, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Remnants of page-bottom interwiki links. Isn't this supposed to be cleaned up by bots long ago?--Roy17 (talk) 01:48, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Can I upload more than 41 files at a time now? (MediaWiki Upload Wizard)

I use the MediaWiki Upload Wizard to upload images and selected 41 (fortyy-one) images, previously it told me that I could only upload 40 (forty) images at a time but now can do more, did the limit increase? Because I didn't see any notice about this in Tech News or anywhere. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 20:49, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

• 
  The new upload limit seems to be at 50 (fifty) files now.
• 
  The new upload limit seems to be at 50 (fifty) files now.
• 
  The new upload limit seems to be at 50 (fifty) files now.
• 
  The new upload limit seems to be at 50 (fifty) files now.

The MediaWiki Upload Wizard now apparently allows 50 (fifty) files at a time now, previously I could only upload 40 (forty) and my user rights haven't changed, is there a blog or something where they announce these changes? Is there a way we can petition the developers to announce such changes in this village pump? --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 15:38, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-02

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

Tech News writers, editors and translators wish you a pleasant 2019 year.

Recent changes

• RelatedSites extension has been undeployed. It was used to create interwiki links on Wikivoyage, now handled by Wikidata. [1]
• MediaWiki logstash logging is moving to a new infrastructure. This is an ongoing deployment. [2]
• codesearch.wmflabs.org has been updated, with new and updated repositories and a new search options for code. [3]
• On several wikis, an account named "Abuse filter" has been created on December 17 to perform some technical maintenance on AbuseFilter. This account has sysop rights but it's a system user and no human can use it. The account already existed on wikis where AbuseFilter can perform blocks, which are issued using this account. See T212268 for more information and future plans.

Problems

• In AbuseFilter, the "Throttle" action takes three parameters: count, period and groups. They must now strictly respect the requirements listed on mediawiki.org. A list of broken filters is on Phabricator. If you're familiar with AbuseFilter, please take a look and fix them. [4]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from January 9. It will be on all wikis from January 10 (calendar).

Meetings

• Search Platform Office Hours is rescheduled to January 9. Check the details for time and date.

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

18:29, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Playing videos at different speed

Is it possible to choose like 2x speed when playing videos on Commons? If not, does anyone know of web browsers that can play .webm at different speeds? This would be useful for reviewing video files I think.--Roy17 (talk) 18:23, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes. Mozilla Firefox can do it, right click the .webm file > play speed. There you can select from 0.5 to 2.0 times speed. I agree it's a handy feature. --Palosirkka (talk) 23:41, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

@Palosirkka: Thanks a lot! I didn't realise this and installed an extension. XD --Roy17 (talk) 00:08, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Blank PDF?

Does this file appear blank to you as well? In the preview I see 368 pages of purest white only... (didn't try downloading it yet tho) --Palosirkka (talk) 16:42, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Solid white. 4nn1l2 (talk) 18:20, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

@Palosirkka: The first page looks fine when downloaded, but thumbnails as solid white. Same symptom as File:Boliche Deportista Alfonso G. Rodriguez saavedra.pdf.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 19:14, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks guys, I'll strike this one off the list of proof of me going bonkers. --Palosirkka (talk) 23:26, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

non-English WikiLove section header?

special:diff/334463964 I posted a canned barnstar, while I had purposely changed UI to Chinese traditional, but the section header was still English. Is there a way to choose the language (other than making a fully customised version)?--Roy17 (talk) 03:55, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure where that message comes from but perhaps MediaWiki:WikiLove.js? If that is where it comes from it would require language switches to be put into the code. Which can only be done by interface admins. --Majora (talk) 17:53, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Wiktionary file usage not showing up

Eg File:en-au-kabana.ogg. I have added the file to wikt:kabana but I am not seeing it in Global usage on the Commons file page.

Is it me or can others verfiy?

--Commander Keane (talk) 07:01, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

I can confirm the usage is not listed for me either. On the other hand I'm not sure if linking like that should add to usage or whether embedding is required. Palosirkka (talk) 16:45, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Okay I did some digging and found at Special:GlobalUsage "Usage at Wiktionary may be incomplete, as Wiktionary has case-sensitive first characters and lowercase uses are not listed." There is a bug filed: here.--Commander Keane (talk) 06:33, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-03

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

Recent changes

• You can now use Google Translate in the content translation tool. [5][6]
• You can now add captions to files on Commons. Captions are short descriptions of the file. They can be translated to all languages we use. They can't use wikitext markup.
• Earlier a quoted HTML attribute had to be followed by a space. Now it doesn't. This means that some pages could look different when you save them even if you didn't edit that part of the text. [7][8]
• Templates with could not show the difference between the live template and the sandbox version when they were tested. This has now been fixed. has a new wrapper parameter now. You can use it for selectors like .mw-parser-output <wrapper parameter value> <selector from CSS page>. [9]

Problems

• When you see an edit in the recent changes feed or in the history of a page some of them have tags. Some tags are added automatically. You can also add tags manually. Tags for edits that have been added manually can be edited. This didn't work for a little while. This has now been fixed. [10]

Changes later this week

• You can move files from your wiki to Wikimedia Commons and keep the file history with the new FileExporter. It will be a beta feature on all wikis from 16 January. If you want to test it you activate it and check your wiki's configuration file.
• Users who could cause more damage to the wikis if someone took over their account have to have more secure passwords. This includes administrators and other user groups. They can't use passwords that are in a list of common passwords. Accounts with common passwords are easy to take over. The list of common passwords was made longer a few weeks ago and has a different error message. Some user groups have been added to those who can't use common passwords. This is to protect all accounts with user rights that could cause damage. [11]
• The AbuseFilter variable minor_edit has been removed. It was deprecated in 2016. Now you can't use it. You can fix the filters using it. You can find them if you use the search bar on Special:AbuseFilter.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 15 17:54, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by MediaWiki message delivery (talk • contribs)

UploadWizard feedback link

Special:UploadWizard the link to leave feedback is wrong.--Roy17 (talk) 00:48, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

@Roy17: It is, whoops, yes. This probably broke a few months ago when we switched off the original feedback link. I've written a fix. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 00:59, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-04

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

Tech News

• Some people did not get last week's issue of Tech News. This was because of a problem with MassMessage. If you did not get last week's issue, you can read it on Meta. [12]

Recent changes

• The content translation tool can now use version 2 as the default version for users who turned on the beta feature. For example it adds the tracking category Pages with unreviewed translations to translations that might have used machine translations without fixing the problems. This is so others can find them. You can find this category in Special:TrackingCategories on Wikipedias.
• https://mediawiki2latex-large.wmflabs.org can now convert collects of up to 800 pages to PDF, EPUB or ODT. Previously this was 200 pages.

Problems

• When a template was edited with the visual editor, it would sometimes put all information on one line. This makes it difficult to read for editors who use the wikitext editor. It also makes it more difficult to see what happened in a diff. This problem affected edits made between 8 and 17 January and is now fixed. [13]
• MassMessage is used to post a message to many pages. It has not been working reliably. Some messages have not been posted to everyone. [14][15]
• Because of a database problem that had to be fixed immediately you could not edit most wikis for a couple of minutes on 17 January (UTC). This has now been fixed. [16]

Changes later this week

• You will be able to use template styles in the Module namespace. [17]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 January. It will be on all wikis from 24 January (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

20:33, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Proposals revamp

I'm thinking about proposing some changes to Commons:Village pump/Proposals. There are some questions about the best way to do this technically, but this is roughly what I have in mind:

• Create Commons:Village pump/Proposal incubator. Kind of like RfC, but who even knows what RfC is? Any proposal could be posted to the incubator, same as how any proposal can now be posted directly to Commons:Village pump/Proposals which results in too many proposals which have no hope.
• No voting in the incubator! Users can comment on the proposal to help the proposer improve it. They can also say they would want to vote on a proposal.
• When at least 2 people unrelated to the proposer (based on current activity in Commons:Village pump/Proposals this seems reasonable) say they would want to cast a vote on the proposal in its current state, the proposer can copy the proposal to Commons:Village pump/Proposals.
• Time-based archival of Commons:Village pump/Proposals gets disabled. Only resolved sections get archived. Proposals that made it this far must be accepted or rejected, not archived and forgotten.
• At the top of Commons:Village pump/Proposals we would add <noinclude>, at the bottom we add </noinclude>.
• Below each header, we'd add </noinclude><includeonly>*[[Commons:Village pump/Proposals#Title of proposal|Title of proposal]]</includeonly><noinclude>
• On Commons:Village pump, Commons:Village pump/Technical and Commons:Village pump/Copyright we include Commons:Village pump/Proposals in a box at the top to increase the visibility of those potentially viable proposals.

Any comment? Will this break wiki? - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 00:22, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Changing the header to ==</noinclude><includeonly>*[[Commons:Village pump/Proposals#Title of proposal|</includeonly>Title of proposal<includeonly>]]{{Newline}}</includeonly><noinclude>== also appears to work. Could probably be made simple with a (substituted) template. Demo in my sandbox. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 01:04, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

@Alexis Jazz: , isn't this best discussed at "Commons talk:Village pump/Proposals"? Because it would make more sense that the people who edit the affected page might discuss it there as it's already in their watchlist. --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 10:30, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: actually, I was planning on a proposal.. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 10:31, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

 Comment I'm working on this at User:Alexis Jazz/Proposal incubator. Feel free to help. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 08:54, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

Image update didn't take

I was trying to update File:EF DI2 (FR12).jpg, but for some reason, it still shows the old version. You can see the new version if you go to the file page, but clicking the image or putting it on a page displays the old version and file history shows looks like I uploaded the old version as well, as does the link to it on Wikipedia (2nd row of the table). For reference, here is the source for the new version: https://www.spc.noaa.gov/efscale/2.html. Is there a way to fix this so that the new version of the image is displayed properly? TornadoLGS (talk) 03:23, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

@TornadoLGS: en:Wikipedia:Purge. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 03:36, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

@TornadoLGS and Incnis Mrsi: For future reference, please see COM:FAQ#PURGE.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 23:42, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I tried purging the page, but that did nothing. But It displayed correctly after I cleared the cache in my browser. TornadoLGS (talk) 01:44, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

A user should eliminate his client problems before declaring that “it still shows the old version”. I won’t even look at this substandard JPEG stuff. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 13:12, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Wrong section in Special:SpecialPages

Hello.How useful "Wikibase" section in Special:SpecialPages?Should not it just appear in Wikidata?Thank you --ديفيد عادل وهبة خليل 2 (talk) 09:56, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

The section is not “wrong” because these special pages exist locally. Another problem is that some of the things don’t work as expected but again, if this wiki technically has these Special: titles, then they must be included into SpecialPages. @ديفيد عادل وهبة خليل 2: please, avoid usage of the adjective “wrong” when cite your personal taste and preferences. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 12:41, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

@Incnis Mrsi: There is no taste or preferences but this is a belief and a surprise. Thank you for reply --ديفيد عادل وهبة خليل 2 (talk) 12:46, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

Hmm, some of them are actually functional, like Special:SetLabel, which sets the captions. I wonder what Special:MergeItems would do. Nothing good, probably. --ghouston (talk) 10:59, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-05

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

Recent changes

• The Wikimedia servers use HHVM to run the PHP code. They are going to use PHP7 and stop using HHVM. You can test PHP7 with a new beta feature. That way you can help find and report problems.

Problems

• When someone moves a page to a name that already exists that page that had the name the article is moved to is deleted. For a couple of months this didn't always work. Some users saw an error message instead. This has now been fixed. [18]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 30 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

18:14, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Section closed with support for changes, however changes do not seem to have been implemented correctly.

The discussion on a proposal to update the padlock icons linked as follows ( https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Village_pump/Proposals&oldid=337030076#Update_padlock_icons_that_Wikimedia_Commons_use_to_the_ones_that_the_English_Wikipedia_uses ), closed with support for the changes. The changes hower do not seem to have taken affect as seen on these pages if viewed (as a non-admin since I am not a admin, and it is protected for being only editable by admins), https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Ukrainian_Wikipedia_15_logo_v01.svg&action=edit Aceing Winter Snows Harsh Cold (talk) 21:31, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

@Aceing Winter Snows Harsh Cold: The message there uses File:Padlock.svg, but I'm not sure why.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 23:32, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Fixed Next time just ask me directly Aceing Winter Snows Harsh Cold. There are hundreds of random uses of the old image scattered throughout the project. Most of which I can't actually see without logging out or by using another device. I was attempting to wait for the file usage list to update so I can clean up the leftovers but that is taking a little while longer than I expected it to. --Majora (talk) 17:09, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Duplicate template misidentifies tagger

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Tirana_bikes.jpg&diff=337034090&oldid=337034004

"This file has been tagged by Smooth O"

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Tirana_bikes.jpg&diff=next&oldid=337034090

"This file has been tagged by SteinsplitterBot"

No, it was still tagged by Smooth O. (and incorrectly, because the so-called duplicate was higher quality and had EXIF unlike the "original") - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 11:07, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

How to propose a change to the MediaWiki software?

Because of Commons:Village pump/Technical#file contains HTML or script code, we need support for IE6 and IE7 to be dropped. (or disable logins on those browsers) As long as those old turds are listed on mw:Compatibility#Browser support matrix, developers will refuse to remove stupid workarounds for Internet Exploder. Saying "Internet Exploder" is not childish in this case, these old IE versions exploded our ability to upload perfectly fine photos like those from https://www.flickr.com/photos/tinto/.

How can such a change be proposed? I can't seem to find a proposals page or anything like that on MediaWiki. On mw:Communication there is this cryptic message "Wikimedia's Meta-Wiki was formerly where documents were managed and proposals were discussed before this site was started. There is still a lot of content there that has yet to be moved.", but it fails to tell where stuff can be proposed now.

I'm not sure we can deal with this at Commons:Village pump/Proposals, I'm sure we would have an easy majority there. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 11:32, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

@Alexis Jazz: You can file a technical RfC in Phabricator to stop checking for security vulnerabilities in uploaded files, but I would point out that there's no way we're dropping basic security controls like this, sorry. You could file a Phabricator task suggesting that MediaWiki strip it on upload, but I don't know how feasible that would be; given the security implications, it'd probably take a few months to do. As a work-around, you can trivially strip the problematic content from the image with a tool like imagemagick or similar. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 15:57, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

@Jdforrester (WMF): don't use words like "no way we're dropping basic security controls like this, sorry". Are you still supporting Netscape Navigator 2.0? This is not a "basic security control". It's a flawed check for a theoretical threat for a crapsack browser that Microsoft hasn't even supported itself for two and a half years with a market share of 1.4% (IE6 and IE7 combined) that can't be used in a secure way to begin with. You actually break features for regular users to support a browser that isn't even on life support but already pronounced dead two and half years ago and buried.. I like ranting. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 16:24, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Oh, and about stripping the offending content: no, that is not trivial. First of all, one would have to download thousands of photos from Flickr somehow. After that, process all of them with a tool. Then, upload. Then, because the checksums no longer match, FlickrevieweR is going to fail them and human license reviewers need to waste their time on them. All of that to support Wikimedia users with an account (because there is no threat to those who don't log in) using IE6 or IE7. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 16:33, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Can't the upload process automatically remove the data prior to upload or simply ignore it? Or can't it be whitelisted exclusively for uploading tools? --Donald Trung 『徵國單』 (No Fake News 💬) (WikiProject Numismatics 💴) (Articles 📚) 23:00, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

@Donald Trung: removing the data comes with complications. The file will no longer be identical to the source, which is the standard. Also, FlickreviewR will fail them. The idea of ignoring the data is basically what caused all the recent events. Whitelisting for upload tools doesn't seem to make much sense. If someone had an incredibly poor evil plan to hack an IE6 user, would it matter whether they uploaded their image directly or uploaded it to Flickr first so they could import it? - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 04:50, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi, I agree that it looks pretty silly to block uploading such files, by all possible means available. Regards, Yann (talk) 18:44, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

This problem makes it difficult for licence reviewers. For example, File:Humphreys Peak, San Francisco Peaks.jpg is a scaled down version of a PD file that contains html codes. A licence reviewer is forced to download the image, edit the problematic EXIF, upload it, and manually approve it (example: File:Milky Way over the San Francisco Peaks.jpg). It adds so much unnecessary work, just for preventing some unimaginable security risks. A wikipedia user (7.5 mil/4.2 bil < 1% of world Internet users) has to use an 10+-year-out-of-date IE on Windows (market share<<1%) to visit such a file on Commons (=x/60mil) and try to display it in IE. Not to mention most problematic codes are not baits for attacks but just inclusion of self promoting URLs.--Roy17 (talk) 11:22, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

ogg bug

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T215189
OPEN

Please look at File:En-uk-Crawley.ogg. When I click on the page itself, it's only 0.2s long and plays nothing but noise, but when I open the source file, it is complete.--Roy17 (talk) 19:08, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

No issues with any Mediaplayer on my box, ~1.5s, not 0.2 as indicated here, and certainly no 284 kbps or similar. Maybe report it on phab:, nobody knows how many vintage 2002 OGG files might be affected. –84.46.53.198 09:58, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Format                                   : Ogg
File size                                : 7.15 KiB
Duration                                 : 1 s 486 ms
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 39.4 kb/s

Audio
ID                                       : 30844 (0x787C)
Format                                   : Vorbis
Duration                                 : 1 s 486 ms
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 24.0 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 1 channel
Sampling rate                            : 22.05 kHz
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 4.35 KiB (61%)
Writing library                          : libVorbis 1.0 (UTC 2002-07-17)

PAGESINCAT malfunction?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T18036
OPEN

Compare {{PAGESINCAT:Flickr review needed|R|files}}=4, and the number shown on Category:License review needed, with the actual number of files in Category:Flickr review needed. The count is off by 42, i.e. when there are zero files in the category, the count is 42 somehow. I first noticed this yesterday (Jan 24).--Roy17 (talk) 07:49, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

The usual tricks (null edit and ?action=purge) don't help, maybe report it on phab:. Presumably some "perennial" issue (older than 2011), but a bug is a bug no matter how old it is. –84.46.53.198 09:33, 6 February 2019 (UTC)