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).

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

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Re: 429 'too many requests' on Media viewer

We talked about this two months ago, and for a while it seemed fixed, but it's been back now for a few days, rendering the media viewer unusable for me. The annoying part is that the desired image shows up for a fraction of a second, and only then is replaced with a broken image symbol. -- Seelefant (talk) Seelefant (talk) 09:32, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Last time it happened, the recommendation by User:JTweed-WMF was If this is still happening, please copy the details on the error page and email them to bot-trafficwikimedia.org so that we can investigate further. User:ASarabadani (WMF) also posted You can create a private phabricator ticket or simply send the information to asarabadaniwikimedia.org.

JTweed and ASarabadani, are these methods of reporting HTTP status 429 errors still actual? —⁠andrybak (talk) 09:31, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I would say an email to bot-traffic or a Phabricator ticket are most likely to be picked up. The ID on the error page helps us to track down why the limit is being exceeded, which can be for reasons like specific blocks put in place protect infrastructure, in addition to the rate limits. We're also currently working on changes that will allow us to have different rate limits for thumbnail and original images, which will hopefully allow us to relax the limits for thumbnail requests and make reader-visible problems less likely. JTweed-WMF (talk) 12:33, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

@JTweed-WMF and @Ladsgroup, Is there a community facing Grafana dashboard or any similar metrics dashboard to monitor spikes in 429s served? Also, similarly do we have any community facing mechanism to get a general understanding of anonymized aggregrates of how many such human-but-blocked-please-unban requests are coming in to bot-traffic, private Phabricator tickets or y'all's personal Gmail accounts? Sohom (talk) 13:55, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

@Sohom Datta The closes I can think of is this. Status of "int" basically means serving 429s (vs hit front, hit back, miss or pass). You can also split it based on cluster (upload being images, text being html requests). That's percentage, but you can turn it into actual number via looking up the total in the main dashboard. Ladsgroup^overleg 23:04, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

Blocked username is sometimes struck, sometimes not

Recently Edittttor was blocked. I'm now seeing their username in strikeout style in many places, but not all. For example, in the attached screenshot from Template:Did you know nominations/Abdul El-Sayed, their username is not struck, but the corresponding talk link is. What's going on here? RoySmith (talk) 11:16, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Looks like the redlink uses <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Edittttor?action=edit&redlink=1">, which isn't properly detected by the markblocked gadget. If I switch from Parsoid to the legacy parser, the link becomes <a href="/w/index.php?title=User:Edittttor&action=edit&redlink=1"> instead, which is detected properly. So either Parsoid needs to be changed to emit /w/index.php links for redlinks, or the gadget needs to be updated to remove URL parameters from /wiki/ links. --rchard2scout (talk) 11:41, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

I think this is a bug in the markblocked gadget. Since User:Edittttor is a red link, MediaWiki adds ?action=edit&redlink=1 to the URL. The gadget's regex doesn't stop at ?, so it ends up trying to parse Edittttor?action=edit&redlink=1 as the username, which fails, and the link gets skipped. The talk page link isn't a red link, so it doesn't get the extra query string and works fine. Changing const articleRegex = new RegExp( mw.config.get( 'wgArticlePath' ).replace( '$1', '' ) + '([^#]+)' ); to const articleRegex = new RegExp( mw.config.get( 'wgArticlePath' ).replace( '$1', '' ) + '([^#?]+)' ); should fix this. – DreamRimmer ■ 11:41, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

That can't be the whole story because the redlink is struck in the block log, and in edit histories, and in Wikipedia:Peer review/Abdul El-Sayed/archive1. RoySmith (talk) 11:49, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

@MSantos (WMF): could you take a look at this? Is this a parsoid issue? RoySmith (talk) 11:54, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Red links starting with /w/index.php? are handled correctly, but links starting with /wiki/ are not. Wikipedia:Peer review/Abdul El-Sayed/archive1 renders links in the former format, which is why this happens. The change above should fix the issue for /wiki/ links. – DreamRimmer ■ 12:05, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

But why is parsoid producing different output for these two cases when the old parser did not? RoySmith-Mobile (talk) 17:00, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

@RoySmith It's not. Parsoid is enabled in the Template: namespace, which is why your first link doesn't work, but not in the Wikipedia: namespace, which is why your second link does (see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Parsoid#Timeline). You can check at the bottom of the page: if it used Parsoid, it will say something like "This page was last edited on 29 July 2026, at 14:31. Page was rendered with Parsoid." --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:29, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

What??? Why are we running different parsers in different namespaces? RoySmith (talk) 18:31, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Parsoid is being rolled out over a period of weeks or maybe months to namespaces on the English Wikipedia. It is causing a bit of confusion and difficulty in troubleshooting. In addition, some back-end processes like categorization are being handled by either the new parser or the legacy parser, causing some pages to work fine when viewed but still show up in a category that is not listed on the page, or similar weirdness. See this technical page for some information(?) about testing that the developers are doing to see if pages look different in Parsoid and the legacy parser. It appears that they are using this output to schedule the rollout to other namespaces, although it is unclear how. Diligent editors at VPT and other places have noticed and reported bugs in Parsoid, some of which have been fixed since it started being the default parser for some pages about a month ago. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:51, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Ugh. I knew it was being rolled out incrementally, but I wasn't paying attention to the details and assumed that meant wiki-by-wiki, not namespace-by-namespace. I guess there will be some pain for a while until this all stabilizes. Thanks for the explanation. RoySmith (talk) 20:07, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

We rolled out Parsoid to all namespaces couple hours back. SSastry (WMF) (talk) 22:38, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

Cool, thanks. I've been watching the parsoid project for a long time. It's good that it's gotten to this point. I'm sure there will continue to be pain as new problems emerge, but that's the price we have to pay for progress. RoySmith (talk) 22:44, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Template:Did you know nominations/Abdul El-Sayed still has "talk" struck but "Edittttor" is not, even after purging the page. RoySmith (talk) 11:06, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

That's because nothing was actually fixed anywhere yet. I've just put in an edit request to implement DreamRimmer's fix mentioned above. --rchard2scout (talk) 13:17, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

@RoySmith, my edit request has been implemented, so this should be fixed now. --rchard2scout (talk) 13:35, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

Yes, indeed it is. Thank you for the fix, and also for the ping. RoySmith (talk) 13:42, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

Whether to use LLMs to generate user scripts

I thought about generating a user script with an LLM, though LLMs are now forbidden from being used to generate new articles or rewritten ones. Is that all right? For full context: discussion link. George Ho (talk) 20:11, 2 August 2026 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, it's all right, and I have used LLMs to sometimes assist with such things, but as with software development in general, you should at least 1) know what you're asking for; 2) try to understand what you're getting (you can have the LLM comment it to assist); 3) test the script to ensure it works as desired; 4) figure out how to fix any issues or ask the LLM to fix them (and retest); and 5) release the script as an alpha or beta at first to allow for time to wring out any issues before declaring it a "full release". Hope this helps. the Stefen 𝕋ower 21:07, 2 August 2026 (UTC)

For the discussion, I will note I am a former professional software developer, just in case anyone is unduly alarmed by my position. The bottom line is if you have the ability and/or patience to understand what you're being given, it can and will work. the Stefen 𝕋ower 22:32, 2 August 2026 (UTC)

Please exercise extreme caution. LLM-written code has been described as the asbestos of software: it seems to do the job but may cause major problems later when changes are needed and no human understands what it is doing or why. Certes (talk) 21:37, 2 August 2026 (UTC)

Please don't. An awful lot of trouble was caused on 31 December 2025 by somebody running an LLM-generated script. It went to WP:ANI and it took me and several other people some hours to clean up the mess. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:48, 2 August 2026 (UTC)

If memory serves, that was a backend process or bot rather than a user script. the Stefen 𝕋ower 22:44, 2 August 2026 (UTC)

There's not much difference between a bot and a user running a script that affects many pages very quickly - see WP:MEATBOT. Remember, I was there at the time, and was myself one of the victims; the ANI was Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1211#TattooedLeprechaun. See also history of User talk:TattooedLeprechaun from that day, which gives some idea of the context - from an innocuous-looking request by a TA, through to an indef block that was appealed and declined. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:32, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

Found another discussion about AI agents: Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#AI agents. George Ho (talk) 19:15, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure if that policy applies or not, but I will echo what WhatamIdoing said at the linked discussion: Do you know enough about Javascript to know whether the LLM is doing a good job? As you answered no, I would avoid it. (I do have a basic understanding of JS and would avoid it myself regardless of policy.) I would also add the caveat that if someone stumbles across this and does write a script primarily using an LLM and publishes it, please disclose such. LittlePuppers (talk) 02:20, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

And if you answered yes, you're wasting your time by involving AI. Writing good code may be hard, but fixing bad code is harder. So that highlighted question is probably rhetorical in all contexts. ―cobaltcigs 03:31, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

If you have a working piece of software, in most cases it's much easier (practically in terms of time involved) to fix a bug than to create the whole thing from scratch with nobody else's assistance (even if you're highly skilled). And LLMs can help find the bug and provide a solution in many cases. If you have a totally rotten code set, LLMs give you the opportunity to generate something totally anew. I would invite everyone to try using LLMs to generate some code even if you don't want to use LLMs or what they produce, just to see what is possible, today, in August 2026. It's pretty mind-blowing. the Stefen 𝕋ower 04:41, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

Your signature is invisible in Safari browser. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:58, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

Only on mobile view. I can still see the signature on desktop view on Safari, nonetheless. George Ho (talk) 19:08, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

Oddness with User:Polygnotus/DuplicateReferences

This came up at Andrew Tate. The "Duplicate citations" script was deposited at the top of the main article (along with the listed citations which were hide/show). The instructions do state "You can add a {{Duplicate citations}} template to the page by clicking the link next to the References section header." Can any of you coders tell me if it's possible for the template to automatically be placed in articles' References sections? Do you think bolded instruction about placement at User:Polygnotus/DuplicateReferences would help? Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 18:45, 3 August 2026 (UTC)-

I'm not sure I understand the outcome you're looking for. DuplicateReferences is a user script written by @Polygnotus. It is unlike that they are the user that used it to place that section. Are you asking for a bot that goes around and runs this code on a large number of articles? audiodude (talk) 18:58, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

No, that is not what I am looking for. And yes, I know which editor placed the notice on the article, I did a search of the article history to find it. My issue is that having the template get placed at the very top of an article is not an optimum use of the template and if it's happened at the Tate article, it's also probably happening on other articles too. The instructions state that the template is supposed to be placed in the References section. Just asking WP-coders IF automatic placement in the References section is possible. - Shearonink (talk) 19:21, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

It's this edit by DocWatson42 that hoisted {{Duplicated citations}} to the top of the article (which doesn't appear to have been made using the DuplicateReferences script), not the one you linked to (which correctly put it in the References section). Nardog (talk) 19:42, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

Ah, thank you! Appreciate the education. Never mind then. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 21:34, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

See my comment in the template's talk page. Why is it to be placed in the "References" section when all of the other reference maintenance templates affecting the whole articles (that I am aware of—counter examples, please) are placed at the top of the article? —DocWatson42 (talk) 04:55, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

DocWatson42, {{Uncategorized}} does the same thing, and you can see some discussion of the placement at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Layout/Archive 14#RfC: Category maintenance templates in MOS:ORDER. In particular:

Other banners that apply only to a section, as opposed to the entire article, go in that section. These apply only to the categorization of the article, so it is logical that they go in that "section". Furthermore, these banners don't need to be widely seen to be effective, editors monitor the category and find/fix them that way. category:Uncategorized from March 2022 is the only month that exists, all prior months have been zeroed and the category deleted - evidence that there is no "notice" problem. MB 00:25, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

— Qwerfjkltalk 12:28, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

Of course, the situations aren't exactly the same unless the article uses list-defined references. — Qwerfjkltalk 12:29, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

You'll see that I disagreed with the placement of {{Uncategorized}} six years ago for the same reasons. And as this and "Uncategorized" affect entire articles, not just sections, and not all editors (such as WikiDees like myself) monitor those cleanup categories. They should be displayed where they will attract the most notice—at the top of articles. —DocWatson42 (talk) 13:30, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

DocWatson42, They should be displayed where they will attract the most notice—at the top of articles. That is one position, yes. You are welcome to start an RfC on the matter, but I hope you admit that it is not a universal belief. — Qwerfjkltalk 16:38, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

but I hope you admit that it is not a universal belief.

Apparently not. —DocWatson42 (talk) 16:44, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-32

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

Updates for editors

• The Reader Experience team has developed a patch demo that wraps the page toolbar onto two lines when there is not enough horizontal space for all the buttons. This aims to reduce crowding in the Vector 2022 toolbar, which can occur on some language Wikipedias at certain screen widths.
• The Reader Experience team is planning to launch Reading Lists, a Community Wishlist item, which is currently available to try in beta, as a full feature in September. Before then, volunteer translator help is needed for string translations into a number of languages. The feature supports reading and learning goals on Wikipedia.
• Next week, the table of contents on Wikimedia Commons file pages will be improved by consolidating the file page table of contents with the page table of contents. This will make it easier to understand a file page’s structure, navigate to specific sections, and share links to individual sections.
• View all 24 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where some TIFF images failed to load after clicking their thumbnail, causing a broken image to be displayed instead of the full-size image, has now been fixed.

Updates for technical contributors

• The variable and function selector in AbuseFilter has been updated to support search and autocomplete. It will allow filter maintainers to find the desired variable or function more quickly.
• The MJPEG and VP8 formats are removed from the video player. The MP4 format (MPEG-4 Part 2) is added instead, which provides higher quality videos to older iPhone devices. It may take a few weeks to retroactively update all existing videos. The default format for modern devices stays the same (VP9/WebM).
• 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 19:44, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

Inverted preview image in dark mode

Screenshot of article preview with color inverted image

Just noticed this in the suggested articles at the bottom of the page. If I click through to the main article the full image displays correctly, so this is a glitch only affecting thumbnails. I noticed something similar going on with userboxes the other day, but I think it was only affecting the text field so I didn't think much about it. ChompyTheGogoat (talk) 11:10, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

ChompyTheGogoat, which Dark mode are you using? — Qwerfjkltalk 12:19, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

Good question. I've been trying out different skins and was having trouble with dark mode misbehaving, so I had to fiddle with settings to get it to cooperate. I'm on Timeless now. Where do I check the dark mode? ChompyTheGogoat (talk) 14:12, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

If you are on Timeless, you are not using a supported dark mode. Izno (talk) 14:30, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

Well, that's a good trick, because it's working! I could swear I found it in preferences. ChompyTheGogoat (talk) 14:37, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

I have the dark mode toggle (which doesn't currently show) and core styling enabled. I don't know what else would be causing it - it doesn't carry over when it's already set in another skin?

Weirdly, dark mode is currently not working on the Preferences page, but does everywhere else. At one point it was swapping back and forth when I switched between this and mobile view, but I managed to fix that (somehow). ChompyTheGogoat (talk) 14:44, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

You have likely enabled the gadget for dark mode. It does its best, but it is not the currently supported way to have dark mode.

(It gets tiring having to re-explain this one, enough so that it might be time to retire the gadget.) Izno (talk) 14:47, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

Both of those are under gadgets. What's the "supported" dark mode then? I thought that's the option the toggle enables? Please don't remove whatever this workaround is until/unless there's an officially supported option. I'm trying to find something that's reasonably functional on my phone, and so far this seems to be the best compromise as it's only a little borky (case in point). ChompyTheGogoat (talk) 14:53, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

No, the official dark mode is not a gadget and the selection of which can be found on every page in Vector 2022 (Minerva's dark mode access is a little bit more difficult).

Please don't remove whatever this workaround is until/unless there's an officially supported option. We are not required to support unsupported things. And the issue is that this unsupported thing keeps coming up as if it were supported, when it's not. If people want to use dark mode in a skin, I have no issue with that. But they need to interact with it as if it's unsupported, rather than coming to WP:VPT and demanding a fix, and then when told it's unsupported acting like it's in fact still supported and making demands like yours. It's tiring and time to move on. Izno (talk) 14:59, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

I'm not demanding anything; I'm trying to understand, because while those options are indeed listed under gadgets, there is nothing that says "These are unsupported workaround options to make dark mode work for when the supported one refuses to work for no particular reason". I had no idea why there's no less than FOUR different places I can change some setting related to dark mode. There's also nothing that explains why the core styling option is necessary to make it work in Timeless, while the basic toggle option does enable it in Minerva - which is why I have to click back and forth through multiple pages and skins trying to figure out what on earth anything actually does (on a regular basis) - and by the way, since the SUPPORTED option also has zero explanation and just a weird icon I likewise had zero clue what it was until I randomly clicked on it one day just to see what would happen. IIRC I already had the gadget enabled (because it's where you expect to find settings and actually says dark mode) so the supported option BROKE dark mode instead. And maybe if the officially supported parts of the site actually worked a little better we wouldn't need all these semi-functional workarounds to be able to use the site at all (point in case - I had to switch skins just to be able to leave this comment). So if it's too much work to just explain things when people ask (or maybe add explanations on the actual features that would prevent said questions?) I suppose you could just disable everything that's "unsupported" and run off all the mobile editors entirely. That includes all scripts too, right? ChompyTheGogoat (talk) 15:18, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

It says right at the top of that preferences section: "Below is a list of custom features ("gadgets") you may enable for your account. Most of them require JavaScript to be enabled in your browser. These tools are not part of the MediaWiki software, and are usually developed and maintained by editors on Wikipedia. Gadgets may malfunction or become inoperable due to software changes"

Apologies for the software being not totally clear. It is a side effect trying to cater to lots of different people, but that tends to make things rather confusing. Documentation for dark mode is here: Wikipedia:Dark mode —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:56, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

One gadget concerned is "Use a black background with green text", which nobody seems to have named yet. It's a CSS gadget - no Javascript is necessary. MediaWiki:Gadget-Blackskin.css has had two edits in the last three years. Its creator, Prodego (talk · contribs), left Wikipedia voluntarily more than three years ago.
Another is "Dark mode toggle: Enable a toggle for using a light text on dark background color scheme", which is a Javascript gadget, located at MediaWiki:Gadget-dark-mode-toggle.js. This one is somewhat newer, and its creator, Xaosflux (talk · contribs), is definitely still around.
But the main point from the above is that nothing at Preferences → Gadgets is "officially supported". Some gadgets are fully maintained (but not by the WMF developers); others are totally unmaintained; and many drop somewhere in between. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:37, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

Like I said, it just wasn't clear between the various different options that don't have explanations for exactly what they do. I thought maybe they had something to do with how the supported dark mode is applied or something, since it kept changing in weird ways. I understand now and it's fine - it's a minor glitch for something that's overall more functional than the supported version. No big deal. (What I object to is threatening to remove that feature because I dared to ask a question about it. Imagine if we acted that way at Teahouse?) ChompyTheGogoat (talk) 00:11, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

And as for the dark mode "toggle", if by that you mean the one provided in Vector 2022, that applies only in Vector 2022 (and potentially Minerva, IDK if that one carries over). No other skin supports it. That's why you can't see it in your preferences, which do vary based on the skin you use (and possibly other reasons, but at least the skin). Izno (talk) 14:48, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

No, I mean the one in preferences that literally says toggle, and does not change with my skin since it supports all of them (sort of). ChompyTheGogoat (talk) 15:19, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

Can't edit on Metawiki

And therefore can't ask for help over there either. Any idea what would cause this? I've made a few edits there before without issue; there's nothing in my logs, and everything is fine over here. I thought it was just an individual page acting up at first, but I can't save my edits on any of them. There's no error message - it just spins/loads forever when I try to submit. ChompyTheGogoat (talk) 17:40, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

Commons seems to be fine too, so it's only on Meta. ChompyTheGogoat (talk) 17:42, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

What do you mean by "Media"? You mean the MediaWiki wiki? Nardog (talk) 17:43, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant Meta. Fixed. ChompyTheGogoat (talk) 17:44, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

citation not appearing and ref message

I have been working on expanding an article through a separate userspace, I have noticed that I have had some errors in displaying some of the references I have cited. Citations 186, 192-194 do not display and I have no idea what is the cause or fix. I did notice a message when it is cited later on in the page that is odd and does not make any sense: {{cite web}}: Empty citation (help): CS1 maint: url-status (link)

Here is the link to the article. Paleface Jack (talk) 18:31, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

it's <ref name="whatever"> not <ref name"whatever">.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:44, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

Browser tab says I'm still editing, but I'm not

I edited SoHo Weekly News with the Visual Editor and after I saved the page, the browser tab still says "Editing SoHo Weekly News". Has anybody else seen this happen? RoySmith (talk) 20:19, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

@RoySmith: I haven't seen it. Does it still happen or was it a one-off glitch? Can you view the HTML source with a browser feature (often Ctrl+u) and see whether it says <title>SoHo Weekly News - Wikipedia</title> or <title>Editing SoHo Weekly News - Wikipedia</title> around the fifth line? PrimeHunter (talk) 12:27, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

I have not been able to reproduce it. I didn't record the exact text, but I did look at the HTML and, no, the title tag did not include "Editing". So, really weird. RoySmith (talk) 12:35, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

I don't know if you have fixed the issue by now, but if the issue persists, try to see if other browsers make the same error. Purging the browser cache may help. Kurdanparez (talk) 12:46, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Article button at the bottom of talk pages

Could we please get an Article button at the bottom of talk pages?

The following happens all the time: My watchlist shows an edit to a talk page. I open the talk page, scroll down to read the new comment. Hmmm... I need to check the article. I scroll up, click on the Article button, open it in a new tab and read what is written there. Aha... Back to the talk page, that now, again, shows the top of the page. Scroll down once more to find the comment.

If we would have an Article button at the bottom of the talk page, that would save me from scrolling up and then scrolling down again for each time I switch between a talk page and the article. I do that a lot, so I would be very grateful for such a button. Lova Falk (talk) 09:58, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Alt+Shift+c perhaps? Ponor (talk) 11:32, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

If you have a keyboard then "Home" and "End" may go to the top and bottom of the viewed page. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:48, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

fn -> and fn <- does the job, but it is still a drag! Lova Falk (talk) 12:12, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Do you have the floating bar at the top of your screen when you're scrolled down on a page? If so, when you're on a talk page, do you see this icon in the row of icons at the top right? Because that's the article button you're looking for. --rchard2scout (talk) 14:27, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Yes, floating bar, but no row of icons, only a "Toggle reader view" icon. Maybe because I use the Timeless skin? Timeless works the best for me by far. Lova Falk (talk) 14:50, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Ah, that might be it, I'm on Vector 2022, which does have the buttons. It's probably possible to add a button somewhere with some userscript, maybe ask the folks over at WP:US/R? --rchard2scout (talk) 07:49, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

Thank you --rchard2scout, I had no idea that this page even existed! Lova Falk (talk) 07:51, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

I got my button and I am even more happy with it than I thought I would be. 😊 Lova Falk (talk) 05:18, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

Certain elements like '{', '|' not pasting

So when I went to Wikipedia:Barnstars to copy a barnstar template and then paste it to someone's talk page, this is what pastes: subst:The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar1=message ~~~~2=alt. What should paste is {{subst:The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar|1=message ~~~~|2=alt}}. As you can see, '{' and '|' does not paste. This is very annoying. I pasted the text onto the google search bar, copied it from there, and then pasted it here to get the 2nd text, what should be pasted. Is there a reason why it doesn't paste when copying directly from a page? I have never had this issue before and have given out many barnstars; last time before today was July 5, 2026. Since then I have given my macbook to be factory reset so I am unsure whether it's a problem with just my laptop, or Wikipedia itself. Can anyone help? jolielover♥talk 11:04, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

This might not be the solution to the underlying problem, but the simplest workaround for now is to use Cmd+Shift+V. Nardog (talk) 11:23, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

@Jolielover: Your edit is tagged "New topic", indicating "Enable quick topic adding" is enabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing. The Visual mode of that tool interacts with the browser in a way which works for me on a Windows PC but maybe it gives problems on your Macbook. If "Visual" is underlined above the top right of the edit box when you make a new section then try clicking "Source" before pasting template code. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:36, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know, however, I've clicked 'add topic' before and it worked out fine, as you can see from the July 5 edit which is also tagged 'new topic'. Has this changed since then? It was easy and convenient before. And yes, I am in the 'source' section. jolielover♥talk 11:46, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

@Jolielover: Is "Source" blue and underlined like in File:Convert to wikitext (New Discussion Tool).png? Do you get the shown "Convert to wikitext" button when you paste the template code? If you do then click it. Does it work if you first paste the template code into the subject field and then copy it from there? PrimeHunter (talk) 12:04, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Yes, it is blue and underlined. I get the convert to Wikitext button. When I click it, this is the result. It works when I paste it into the subject, and when I copy it from there and paste into the body. jolielover♥talk 12:22, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

To be clear, the final result and what is in the source looks different. I am just currently unable to paste it here. jolielover♥talk 12:26, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

MediaWiki gets many changes every week. A big recent change to talk pages is that Parsoid is used. I don't know whether it can affect the new topic tool but does it work without Parsoid in https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jolielover&action=edit&section=new&useparsoid=0? PrimeHunter (talk) 12:19, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

No, same issue jolielover♥talk 12:22, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

@Jolielover: I don't have a Macbook for testing but you have to somehow get plain text instead of rich text (text with links when Wikipedia:Barnstars displays code). Pasting to a place with no rich text option and copying from there apparently works but is a little cumbersome. Does it work if you insert with Cmd+Shift+V as Nardog suggested, or Cmd+Option+Shift+V? Or is there an "Edit > Paste and Match Style" option? Or two options for how to paste if you right click and one of them works? Or maybe two options for how to copy if you right click before you originally copy the text? PrimeHunter (talk) 13:11, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

It is Parsoid-related, but it's to do with the page you're copying from rather than the page you're pasting into. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Barnstars?useparsoid=0 lets you grab a copy that works fine. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 14:50, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Yep!!! This works, can copy and paste it fine. Is there a way to disable parsoid permanently, don't want to go ahead and put that bit of text all the time when I can't copy somegthing. (Sorry, not all too familiar with technical stuff) jolielover♥talk 14:54, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

If you want to, you currently can at the bottom of the editing section of Special:Preferences, set "Use the new Parsoid wikitext parser" to "Never". That's going to go away as an option soon as the old parser is entirely removed, though.

I'll get the actual paste issue fixed, so it shouldn't matter soon. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 15:01, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Hm. It's something about how the HTML that you copied is being cleaned up for pasting -- when you copy from the read mode of an article your clipboard actually includes a full HTML version of what you selected, and we try to turn that into plain text for the source mode paste. For some reason the wikitext characters are being stripped out. I'll look into it. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 14:48, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Here we go, it's at least strongly-related to T431638: Copied preformatted text cannot be pasted on 2017 wikitext editor. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 14:51, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Thanks! jolielover♥talk 14:54, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Okay, the patch fixing that has landed. It'll go out on the normal release schedule, so next week this will work without it mattering what your Parsoid setting is. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 20:23, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

List gap highlighter script stopped working

A while back I added a light gap highlighter script to my common.css (it's the last section there), however without my changing anything it has stopped working, I think in the past circa week. Can someone (advise me how to) fix it. Thanks. Thryduulf (talk) 11:23, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

This could be because of Parsoid. Can you share an example page where it should be working but isn't? – DreamRimmer ■ 11:55, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

There are a couple of examples at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 July 30, e.g. Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 July 30#Jolter, Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 July 30#Homophobic hate speech, Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 July 30#Thomas and Friends Sing-Along & Stories. Thryduulf (talk) 12:20, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

I've just noticed it is working as expected at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 August 3#His Royal Airness, where there are two bulleted lines separated by a blank line. In the July 30 examples the first two are bullet and indent separated by a blank line, and the third bullet, indent, bullet with no blank lines. Previously all were being highlighted. Thryduulf (talk) 13:02, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

The selectors div>ul+dl and div>dl+ul are no longer matching. It seems Parsoid is wrapping things in <section>...</section>, so the <ul> and <dl> are no longer direct children of a <div>. The things that still work are the ones with selectors ul:not(.portalbox)+ul and dl+dl, since those aren't restricting to a specific parent element. Anomie⚔ 13:42, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Not really certain why the above div elements are needed in these selectors. Izno (talk) 15:39, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Thryduulf copied from me, adding some insignificant newlines (permalink to mine as it was at the time), and mine still works as intended. I think that I included the div> in the selector so that only top-level lists would be picked up, not lists nested inside lists. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:21, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Probably can just switch the div to a section then. Izno (talk) 21:42, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

As an FYI this expected impact is documented at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid/Parser_Unification/Instructions_for_editors#To_handle_%3Csection%3E_tags_in_Parsoid's_output which is also linked from Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Parsoid#Where to report bugs and issues. I am mostly repeating it here so more editors see that page and are familiar with the documentation there. SSastry (WMF) (talk) 17:24, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

For anyone interested in adding some layout style to discussion threads in general (which will also reveal when the list nesting sequence has been interrupted), you can see my stylesheet documented at User:Isaacl/style/discussion-threads. isaacl (talk) 17:07, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

What do the “wbentity” and other such hypertechnical page changes on the mobile app actually mean?

Sheer curiosity question here: on the Wikipedia app version of my page watchlist, I occasionally see changes to pages that look hyper technical, which usually say stuff like “wbentity” and “wbreferences,” followed by a bunch of numbers (I’m probably not even saying the right terms that are often used). Then, when I click on them, the app says that there is actually no change being made to the page. Furthermore, these changes do not appear on the desktop version of Wikipedia. Just curious, what are they? LincolnMagnus (talk) 23:01, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

They are changes to the Wikidata items associated with these pages. On the desktop version (or mobile website), you can view them by clicking into the "Active filters" menu on the watchlist and selecting "Wikidata edits" (or follow this link: ). I didn't know that the mobile app displays them incorrectly, someone should complain about it on Phabricator. (By the way, is that the iOS or Android app?) Matma Rex talk 23:46, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

iOS app LincolnMagnus (talk) 02:17, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

Category:Category

Back in March, a user named Saftgurka went around plopping boilerplate text of the {{Update after|2026|08|01|category|reason=Gunnar Aldén > Pernilla Josefsson-Lazo}} variety onto the names of the ambassadors in the infoboxes on Swedish embassies. This had absolutely no effect on anything at the time, but now that it's after 2026-08-01, the word "category" in that template is now causing it to transclude a redlinked nonsense Category:Category onto the pages, which they weren't in prior to 08-01 as that would have shown up at WantedCategories. I've had to edit at least 20 pages in the past few days alone to make the redlinked category go away by removing the word "category" from an update-after template on a Swedish embassy, and it's becoming tiresome.

So since that's a category that obviously won't and rightly shouldn't ever exist at all, could somebody who knows more about template coding than I do modify that template to make sure it can't autogenerate or transclude that silliness? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 04:15, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

Bearcat, looking at the template documentation, the 4th parameter is for a custom category, so these usages are incorrect. Therefore the appropriate fix is probably just to edit them all.
I don't know why this has only recently started to cause an error; it looks like it should always have caused an error. — Qwerfjkltalk 10:49, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

{{Update after|2026|08|01|category|...}} only adds Category:category after 2026-08-01. Link tables for the affected articles are updated with a delay so it varies when they actually appear in the category. The search hastemplate:"Update after" insource:/\|category\|/ doesn't find more Swedish ambassadors with 2026-08-01 but currently two with 2026-09-01, and two unrelated articles where it may have been other editors who made the mistake. Four articles are easy to fix but I suspect this error will continue to happen periodically when editors copy code from Template:Update after#Usage. I have modified the documentation to make it more clear that the text should be changed in calls. Category:category name might start being populated now instead but the risk seems smaller. Somebody could code the template to detect this error and omit the category or add an error category instead. We could also create the category as hidden with an explanation of the issue. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:29, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

I have seen the redlinked Category:Category at WantedCategories before, but not recently, not on Swedish embassies and not necessarily in big batches of a couple dozen pages all at once like this, and I also can't assert with any confidence that it's been attributable exclusively to this template alone.

Regardless, I'm not asking that the template be completely prevented from being able to transclude any categories at all — but the template should absolutely be coded to recognize that if it's specifically being called upon to generate a category named Category:Category, then that results from a user-paste error rather than a category that should actually be generated and transferred onto pages. This is indeed a plausible enough user error that it should be blocked at the source rather than dealt with in "grin and bear it" fashion every time it recurs, so the template should really be smart enough to recognize it as a coding error rather than a category that's actually expected to exist. Bearcat (talk) 13:39, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

I have coded the template to add the new Category:Articles using Template:Update after with a placeholder category if the custom category is literally "category" or "category name". It was tested by previewing an article with {{Update after|2026|08|01|category|reason=something}} and {{Update after|2026|08|01|category name|reason=something}} PrimeHunter (talk) 15:47, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

Enabling syntax highlighting by default for newcomers

Autocompletion, a new feature in CodeMirror 6

Hi all! In April we deployed CodeMirror 6, an upgraded version of the extension that powers syntax highlighting, the feature that helps make wikitext easier to read in the source editor by turning wikilinks blue, templates purple, references green, and other color codings. The new version includes additional features like autocompletion and identification of linting errors. Syntax highlighting can be toggled on or off at any point by clicking the highlighter button () in the 2010 editing toolbar, and individual features can be enabled/disabled in CodeMirror’s preferences.

However, syntax highlighting is not enabled by default, so many newer editors never discover it and do not benefit from these features. A 2021 village pump discussion I initiated as a volunteer found consensus to turn on syntax highlighting by default for all new editors, but the implementation stalled for technical reasons. Given the recent upgrade, we are ready to move forward again. Our plan is to enable syntax highlighting for new editors (leaving existing editors’ preferences unchanged) starting August 20. How does this sound to you all? MusikAnimal (WMF) (who led the upgrade) and I are available to answer questions!

Cheers, Sdkb‑WMF ^talk 13:53, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly support this. I’ve been around for just about two years, and I only recently learned about and activated syntax highlighting. Ever since, it’s been an indispensable tool for me, and I have wondered why it isn’t automatically enabled. The thing it’s most useful for to me is to provide contrast in the Source Editor so I can more easily see where I am by looking at the pattern of colors, rather than assisting that much in identifying different types of source code at a glance, but that’s because I’m a pretty quick reader and am reasonably adept with wikitext so I can mostly already do that. However, I feel like if I had had this enabled from the start, it would have helped me memorize the different kinds of source code better and I would’ve learned wikitext much quicker and more painlessly than I did. Cheers, 𝔰𝔥𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔱𝔞𝔯 ^{(𝔱𝔞𝔩𝔨)} (any/all) In solidarity. 01:36, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

WantedCategories explosion

Bit of a situation at Special:WantedCategories that I need some assistance with, of a type very unlike anything I've ever reported here before.

Normally, each run of the report turns up about 150-200 redlinked categories, but the latest one features over 1,100 — and the overspill, so far, has been attributable entirely to nonexistent categories being added to {{non-free book cover}} — e.g. Category:Yon Ill Wind resulting from the licensing template on File:PiersAnthony YonIllWind.jpg being coded as {{Non-free book cover|image has rationale=yes|category=Piers Anthony book cover images|Yon Ill Wind}}.

The presence of these categories, further, is deeply interfering with the process of even trying to find the categories that aren't attributable to this in the list — I can't tell whether a category is one of these or not without checking every one of those 1,100+ categories one by one, which I'm not interested in dedicating my entire day to doing.

So could somebody who knows more about template coding than I do edit {{non-free book cover}} to slap an #ifexist condition on its category-generation function to make the redlinks go away, so that I don't have to manually gnome my way through over a thousand redlinked categories? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 14:55, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

The problem appears to be Special:Diff/1367996176 by Paine Ellsworth. It's not clear to me what exactly that edit was trying to do, but if nothing else it could be reverted until it's figured out. Anomie⚔ 15:10, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for that. I reverted and the redlinks went away from the pages, although the categories themselves haven't emptied out right away at the "stuff in redlink even though redlink not still on pages" level — I know that part takes a while, so I'll let it ride and see what happens, but at least it got the redlinks off the pages themselves. Thanks for the catch. Bearcat (talk) 15:17, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

Perceived explosion of em-dashes

For the last three months I've been witnessing more and more em-dashes in articles, like this one. My intuition tells me it's due to an expanded use of AI to edit and compose articles. I would also not rule out the possibility of hired companies overwhelming the website with automated edits. Is there are way to see if the frequency of em-dashes has increased or not over the years? CongruenceRelation (talk) 20:35, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

I don't know about trends but your example currently has 14 em dashes. There were 16 after a 2014 edit by Omnipaedista who presumably didn't use AI. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:38, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

I have been using em dashes on Wikipedia since 2008, long before generative AI was even a thing. Omnipaedista (talk) 07:04, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

Recent AI models don't use em dashes significantly more than human writers, and ChatGPT actually uses them less, according to a study by The Economist. the wub "?!" 08:49, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

Americans seem particularly fond of them. British people hardly use them at all, preferring a spaced en-dash to an unspaced em-dash. DuncanHill (talk) 09:00, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

Why have section edit previews changed?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T431137

Why have section edit previews changed recently? Reference sections used to be headed with a line saying "Preview of references" but this is no longer there. Sections with a note ({{efn}}) where the "notelist" template is not included in the actual section now report a "Cite error" when there is no error, the issue is just that the edit covers one section only, and similarly there is a "Cite error" reported when a section uses a named reference but the name is defined elsewhere in the article. The error message now says "The named reference X was invoked but never defined" whereas it used to say something like "not defined at all or not in this section".

I asked this question here on 22 July, but discussions all picked up on a different issue concerning sectioning and section numbers, and my query was never addressed. This item was then archived on 29 July so I am asking the question again. BobKilcoyne (talk) 04:09, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

This is a bug. User:Izno answered your question at the end of the section that you created, which was indeed derailed by another bug: The named reference missing in section issue is a known bug associated with the transition to Parsoid. phab:T431137. It was also discussed on VPT on July 3. – Jonesey95 (talk) 10:50, 8 August 2026 (UTC)