Wikimania

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I'm not at Wikimania either. (I'm too sick to enjoy it anyway.) If you were there, then I was going to ask some other devs to look over your project. Some of these things are easier to do in person. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:06, 15 July 2015 (UTC)Reply

User draft

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Hi. You tried to create a draft at Usuario:..., but here on English Wikipedia it has to be User:.... I moved the page to User:Luis Felipe Schenone/Wikis as a self-correcting mechanism. —Largo Plazo (talk) 18:09, 9 November 2015 (UTC)Reply

Speedy deletion nomination of User:Luis Felipe Schenone/Wikis as a self-correcting mechanism

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If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.

You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on User:Luis Felipe Schenone/Wikis as a self-correcting mechanism, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G1 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page appears to have no meaningful content or history, and the text is unsalvageably incoherent. If the page you created was a test, please use the sandbox for any other experiments you would like to do.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. — Maile (talk) 19:47, 9 November 2015 (UTC)Reply

July 2016

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  Hello, I'm Roscelese. I wanted to let you know that one or more external links you added have been removed because they seemed to be inappropriate for an encyclopedia. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page, or take a look at our guidelines about links. Thank you. –Roscelese (talkcontribs) 03:20, 12 July 2016 (UTC)Reply

MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-ProveIt.js#editprotected

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Greetings, can you please comment here? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:04, 15 August 2016 (UTC)Reply

ProveIt in Draftspace

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Hey, Felipe, since you seem to be behind the ProveIt gadget, I thought I'd bother you with this. ProveIt looks like it's disabled on Draftspace, and even the yellow brackets symbol isn't on the toolbar. Is it something I'm doing wrong, or is that just how it is? Thanks, MediaKill13 (talk) 07:32, 30 August 2016 (UTC)Reply

@MediaKill13: Hi, I'm not sure what may be going on, because the current version supposedly works on the draftspace and I haven't made any changes to it. However, in few days I'll upload a new version of the gadget that will definitely be enabled on the draftspace, so please wait for it! --Felipe (talk) 15:58, 1 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

Dependencies and RL

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So, it is obligatory to specify dependencies in JS script or it is possible to move dependencies into MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition? Just a question, because I am not suitably qualified. Iniquity (talk) 20:27, 13 October 2016 (UTC)Reply

@Iniquity: Moving the dependencies to MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition should be equivalent to calling them from ProveIt.js, and when I tried it in my local wiki the gadget worked fine. However, I then removed the dependencies from ProveIt.js and MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition, and the gadget continued to work just fine. I did a hard refresh and cleared the cache but still it worked. So I'm a bit confused now, I'm probably missing something. In any case, are you asking out of curiosity? Or is the Russian community concerned about it? Also, check my new post at Wikipedia talk:ProveIt#New version 2, cheers! --Felipe (talk) 00:51, 14 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
Yes, out of curiosity and for unification. Iniquity (talk) 15:36, 14 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
Also, may u add summary for edits, please. It will help to understand what u change for another users. Iniquity (talk) 16:02, 14 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
@Iniquity: ProveIt already adds an edit summary ("Сноски отредактированы с помощью ProveIt"), do you mean different edit summaries for when you add, edit or remove a reference? Or what? --Felipe (talk) 16:17, 14 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
No, I am about your edits in source code. Iniquity (talk) 16:25, 14 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
Oh, ok, my bad, I will. --Felipe (talk) 17:01, 14 October 2016 (UTC)Reply

October 2016

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  Hello, I'm McGeddon. Your recent edit to the page Nerd appears to have added incorrect information, so I have removed it for now. If you believe the information was correct, please cite a reliable source or discuss your change on the article's talk page. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. I can't see how nerds are noted for engaging in "unknown" activities. McGeddon (talk) 14:54, 30 October 2016 (UTC)Reply

I wonder if his first initial is "R." Heh.  — SMcCandlish ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ʌ<  08:14, 5 January 2018 (UTC)Reply

ProveIt

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I had posted this message on Wikipedia talk:ProveIt, but you don't seem to have noticed: is there any way to make the new ProveIt render references like {{cite web | url= | title= | publisher= | date= | accessdate=}}, as with the older one? I think that style of rendering references is the best and cleanest. Kailash29792 (talk) 05:08, 30 November 2016 (UTC)Reply

I have posted a new complaint there. Please respond. --Kailash29792 (talk) 10:55, 29 April 2017 (UTC)Reply

Wikiversity ELs

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Hi. I'm uncertain to the acceptable practice regarding Wikiversity, but I am uneasy about you adding external links to Wikiversity content that you have created there, and which mostly consist of your own personal musing without supporting sources. Can you direct me to anything that suggests this is not covered by Links normally to be avoided, point 12, here? Thanks. --Escape Orbit (Talk) 21:56, 9 August 2017 (UTC)Reply

@Escape Orbit: Hi, thanks for your interest in the well-being of Wikipedia! I understand that linking to resources I started myself (although other users have contributed) may be controversial. In response to your request, I may direct you to point 5 of WP:ELNO#Links to be considered. However, if you review the resources and think they add no value to the articles, I'll respect your decision to remove them, as my judgement is biased in their favor. Cheers! --Felipe (talk) 22:27, 9 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for your reply. I think that, yes, they may be considered, but considering that they are articles with only one significant contributor (you) Links normally to be avoided, point 12, applies. --Escape Orbit (Talk) 20:43, 10 August 2017 (UTC)Reply

ArbCom 2017 election voter message

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Hello, Sophivorus. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)Reply

WikiWidget

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What's the status of that? I notice that Template:WikiWidget has no documentation or talk page, and I haven't see anything about it since this was first introduced.  — SMcCandlish ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ʌ<  08:14, 5 January 2018 (UTC)Reply

@SMcCandlish: Hi! Wikiwidgets are enabled in the Spanish Wikipedia, but besides that, they are inactive. I tried to get support to enable them in the English Wikipedia but failed twice (discussions linked at c:Commons:WikiProject WikiWidgets). If you want to start a third discussion, I will participate. Cheers! --Felipe (talk) 13:48, 5 January 2018 (UTC)Reply
I honestly don't really remember what it was, I just had lots of code relating to a test of it, still in my common.js and common.css pages.  — SMcCandlish ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ʌ<  13:51, 5 January 2018 (UTC)Reply
@SMcCandlish: Ok, well in c:Commons:WikiProject WikiWidgets you have all info related to the topic. --Felipe (talk) 15:07, 5 January 2018 (UTC)Reply

Extract/excerpt

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At WP:Cascading content you changed valid template links into redlinks, so I reversed that. If the intent was to redlink a template you're going to create later, you might at least want to annotate it with "(template forthcoming)" or something, in the interim.  — SMcCandlish ¢ 😼  06:41, 5 July 2018 (UTC)Reply

---

Hello. I've just noticed {{Excerpt}}. That's an interesting development and I can see the merits of keeping repeated content up to date, but I have a few concerns. Module:Excerpt is still in beta testing and is mainly aimed at the Portal: namespace. It strips out several types of content such as references, images and infoboxes, which you may want to retain when cascading content. Its rough and ready wikitext parser makes assumptions about layout that are occasionally false and therefore doesn't deal with every case. We're continuing to add new features, mainly by detecting and stripping out decorations which aren't useful in portals, which improves the output but carries risks. I'm also keen to keep the module niche enough to avoid template editor protection, which might effectively prevent it from being fixed or enhanced further. Would {{#lst:}} {{#lsth:}} {{#lstx:}} or some other selective transclusion be more appropriate for mainspace? Certes (talk) 11:25, 5 February 2019 (UTC)Reply

@Certes: Hi! The fact that the Excerpt module doesn't transclude references is a problem, true. That's why in the Spanish Wikipedia (my home wiki) I made a modification to the Excerpt module that adds an option for transcluding references. But what do you mean that it strips images? In the Spanish version at least all images are transcluded, and in fact yesterday I was thinking on adding another option to the module so that only the first image is transcluded, which is usually all you want when transcluding introductions in other articles. Using {{#lst:}} {{#lsth:}} {{#lstx:}} is possible, and in fact the first versions of the template did that, but the problem is that they transclude hatnotes like {{other uses}}, which leads, as you say, to selective transclusion using <noinclude> and <section> tags. The problem with these tags is that they are a pain to do, maintain, and most importantly understand by new users. Using the modified Excerpt module has been much easier and was a big step forward for cascading content at the Spanish Wikipedia. So far I haven't really noticed any problems using it. By the way: here at the English Wikipedia I haven't found time to start using {{Excerpt}} yet, but in the Spanish Wikipedia it's gaining momentum and doing some amazing things. For these reasons, I think that the way forward is to keep on improving the Excerpt module so that it also helps with cascading content, rather than stop using it. I, for one, am willing to help.   Cheers! --Felipe (talk) 12:13, 5 February 2019 (UTC)Reply
That's interesting. I'm glad that you've found a use for the module. It removes links beginning with File: and Image: (and Archivo: in the Spanish version) and handles them separately. It also attempts to find images within infoboxes, though the parsing looks for English words and I don't know how well it works with Spanish text. If you want to show (for example) the first and third images, you can use |files=1,3 to make them appear. This is because portals usually only want to show one image. Certes (talk) 12:33, 5 February 2019 (UTC)Reply

ArbCom 2018 election voter message

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Hello, Sophivorus. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)Reply

Edit summary in ProveIt

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You are invited to comment here. Please do respond. --Kailash29792 (talk) 03:36, 15 July 2019 (UTC)Reply

Global watchlist - Update 1

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ProveIt Question

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Hey, Sophivorus! I'm terribly sorry if this is a dumb noob question, but I have to ask. Now, I'm not sure if it's just me, but ProveIt has been relegated to the very bottom of my screen lately (I have to scroll down to find it), and I'm not sure if that was intended or not; do you know a way to get it to return to the bottom right of my screen, and follow along with my scrolling? Thank you for all your hard work! Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 21:43, 8 October 2019 (UTC)Reply

@Javert2113: Hey, thanks for contacting me! I noticed the same issue a couple of times while developing, but then it was gone and never returned. I thought it was some old CSS that was still in the cache. But now you tell me it's happening to you. Have you done ctrl + shift + R ? If yes, then please add the following to your common.js and let me know:
#proveit {
    position: fixed !important;
}
Hi again, Sophivorus! Hm, I tried bypassing the cache a while ago, and re-did it just now, and I tested the code: I'm afraid neither work, for some reason. As a Firefox user, it might be my multiple add-ons or something of that sort, but I doubt it. Still, this isn't going to stop me from using ProveIt, of course; this is just a minor annoyance, having to drag the screen open or scrolling all the way down to get it. I appreciate your aid and all the work you do, even if this issue persists. Perhaps I should switch back to classic ProveIt? Thank you! Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 23:34, 8 October 2019 (UTC)Reply
@Javert2113: If I inspect my #proveit and remove position: fixed; then ProveIt jumps to the bottom of the screen as you describe. So as far as I can tell, it seems a CSS issue. However, the CSS seems to be working fine for me and for others, since you're the only one who has reported this. I'm thankful for the bug report and I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but unfortunately if I can't reproduce the issue, I'm at a loss on how to fix it until we find another clue. Does the issue happen on other browsers? Kind regards, Sophivorus (talk) 11:37, 9 October 2019 (UTC)Reply

Global watchlist - Update 2

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ArbCom 2019 election voter message

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 Hello! Voting in the 2019 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 on Monday, 2 December 2019. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2019 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:11, 19 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

Global watchlist - Update 3

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Google Code-In 2019 is coming - please mentor some documentation tasks!

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Hello,

Google Code-In, Google-organized contest in which the Wikimedia Foundation participates, starts in a few weeks. This contest is about taking high school students into the world of opensource. I'm sending you this message because you recently edited a documentation page at the English Wikipedia.

I would like to ask you to take part in Google Code-In as a mentor. That would mean to prepare at least one task (it can be documentation related, or something else - the other categories are Code, Design, Quality Assurance and Outreach) for the participants, and help the student to complete it. Please sign up at the contest page and send us your Google account address to google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org, so we can invite you in!

From my own experience, Google Code-In can be fun, you can make several new friends, attract new people to your wiki and make them part of your community.

If you have any questions, please let us know at google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org.

Thank you!

--User:Martin Urbanec (talk) 21:58, 23 November 2019 (UTC)Reply

Global watchlist - Update 4

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Regarding ProveIt on hiwiki

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Hi Sophivorus, we have installed this gadget on Hindi Wikipedia (hi.wikipedia). Recently I tired to edit some references using this but failed to save the edits finally. It says The tag "ProveIt" is not allowed to be manually applied. Can you please take a look and suggest what do we need to make it working. Regards. --SM7--talk-- 14:13, 28 January 2020 (UTC)Reply

@SM7: Should be fixed now. Please be sure to load the latest code by doing a hard refresh (ctrl + shift + r), cheers! Sophivorus (talk) 15:30, 28 January 2020 (UTC)Reply
Thank you very much. It is working now. --SM7--talk-- 17:17, 28 January 2020 (UTC)Reply

Global watchlist - Update 5

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Essay

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I don't see value in Wikipedia:Asimov's prophecy. It seems like random thought as it really says nothing insightful about Wikipedia. I would ask that you move that essay back into your userspace. Chris Troutman (talk) 16:30, 24 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Chris troutman: I disagree. I think it's quite insightful and may help others see Wikipedia from a larger perspective. However, feel free to propose it for deletion if you must. Sophivorus (talk) 23:36, 24 March 2020 (UTC)Reply
It's an excellent essay, even though very short. In the Wikimania f2f meeting in Frankfurt that I attended, this idea was clearly circulating - you're not alone to think about the relevance of Asimov's Foundations. I agree that it's not urgent to shift it out of user space. Boud (talk) 15:09, 5 April 2020 (UTC)Reply
@Boud: Thanks! I've been wanting to expand it for some time now, drawing some parallel between the second stage of the Foundation and the commercial potential of Wikipedia, as I drafted at Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-03-01/From the archives. I'm curious about what thoughts circulated in Wikimania f2f, do you remember any? Cheers! Sophivorus (talk) 15:17, 5 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

MfD nomination of Wikipedia:Asimov's prophecy

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  Wikipedia:Asimov's prophecy, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Asimov's prophecy and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Wikipedia:Asimov's prophecy during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Chris Troutman (talk) 16:44, 25 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

Excerpt PL COVID-19 + templates

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I like the idea of the Excerpt template. However, you made some mistakes in shifting references. I'll have a go at cleaning up. Afterwards, you could check my edits on the three pages PL PL template 1 PL template 2 to update your bots or list of hacks based on what needs correcting, to reduce future errors. Boud (talk) 15:13, 5 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

Your algorithm didn't foresee all branches of the psychosocial evolution of usages within the Foundation software itself. What wasn't foreseen was the possibility of there being two html comments inserted inside of a {{cite web}} reference. <!-- --> cannot be nested; the first internal closure closes the first opening, instead of closing the most recent opening. See my edit and it should be clear.
The templates seem to be OK when they're included in the "main" (PL) COVID-19 page. There remains a minor bug (or feature :)) which is not your fault, since I don't see anything in your edits that could explain it. The bottom of both the two template pages gives a big red warning about {{notelist}} or equivalent being missing. The main page does not show the warning. I suspect that this is due to the fact that each template no-includes the other one. The motivation was to make it easy to check if any references are broken. Most readers won't notice this, since they won't scroll all the way down to the bottom of the references on a template page; and the red warning does not appear on the main PL COVID-19 page that includes both templates. Any thoughts about this would be welcome, though my feeling is that the best is probably not to try to "solve" it. The only real long-term solution, which becomes even more important with things like {{excerpt}}, is to have bibtex-type referencing, where a .bib file has a huge list of references, and only those which are needed are used; the others are ignored. For example, it would become possible to have e.g. 2020 coronavirus pandemic in Poland/bib, include this in any pages that use references from there, and the mediawiki algorithms would only consider errors to exist for missing references, not for uncited references. Feel free (CC-BY-SA allows you to anyway) to copy/paste this paragraph on any pages where people are actively thinking about this (or should think about it).
So right now, my impression is that you only have the one bug listed above. Nice work. :) Boud (talk) 15:50, 5 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

Please don't "fix" redirects

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Hi Felipe, I saw that you "fixed" redirects in edits like this [1]. You might not be aware of it, but please don't change such links through redirects, as, in most cases, the links are routed through a redirect for a purpose and there is nothing to "fix", in fact, attempting to fix them is typically counter-productive. Please read WP:NOTBROKEN, WP:NOPIPE, MOS:NOPIPE for some background. Also, our Manual of Style generally asks us to avoid abbreviations where possible and to use 4-digit years in MOS:YEARRANGEs, that's the reason why this link is going through a redirect. Stay healthy, --Matthiaspaul (talk) 16:38, 5 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Matthiaspaul: I understand, thanks for the links. I should have explained in my edit summary that the real reason for my "fix" was that when redirects are used, self-links end up showing as regular blue links on articles that transclude other articles via the Template:Excerpt. For instance, in this particular case, there would be a blue link to the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic article in 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic#Germany, which is quite undesirable. I'll make sure to write more detailed edit summaries on any future "fixes" I need to do. Thanks for the heads up! Sophivorus (talk) 17:08, 5 April 2020 (UTC)Reply
I see, thanks for the explanation as well. I wasn't aware of that {{Excerpt}} is used in the target article. I haven't tried (yet) but to fix that problem we could either rename the target article (will most probably happen for the whole group of coronavirus articles at some stage when the topic has settled a bit in the future), or use a piped link like [[2019–20 coronavirus pandemic|2019–2020 coronavirus pandemic]]. However, this dependency of the source article from a usage of {{Excerpt}} in the target article is somewhat undesirable. Would there be some way to handle this inside of the {{Excerpt}} template by kind-of-"resolving" such redirect links when it pulls a content excerpt from the source article before the transclusion into the target article? --Matthiaspaul (talk) 18:09, 5 April 2020 (UTC)Reply
@Matthiaspaul: Definitely! I think this is doable within the template (actually within the Module:Excerpt, but whatever). I'm writing it down to not forget, as I intend to continue working on excerpts, especially if I get the grant I requested. Thanks! Sophivorus (talk) 19:15, 5 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

Using noinclude to improve excerpts

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Hi Sophivorus! I just realized that it's possible to use <noinclude>...</noinclude> to make excerpts a lot more natural. I've implemented it to change a bunch of "the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic reached Foobaristan..." lines to just "the pandemic reached Foobaristan..." Thought you might want to know! {{u|Sdkb}}talk 00:12, 10 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Sdkb: Nice idea, thanks for the heads up! Sophivorus (talk) 00:17, 10 April 2020 (UTC)Reply
Apropos <noinclude>, I was just following some other discussion [2] where I saw that you are quite familiar with Mediawiki's implementation of references, so you might know what happened a few months ago that disabled the preview of (unused) references (defined in list-style) in edit mode, see Template talk:Reflist#Preview with nonempty refs parameter, or perhaps you even have fun to fix it... ;-)
--Matthiaspaul (talk) 00:34, 17 April 2020 (UTC)Reply

Global watchlist - Update 6

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Could you please explain...

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This edit surprised me. A contributor used WP:ProveIt to rewrite the references in Lizzie Post.

In doing so all the newlines were stripped from the references. This has the effect of strongly eroding the utility of diffs. If your tool actually found something that merited a change, it hid that change by stripping the newlines. The standard diff renderer can't recognize a small correction when newlines are stripped or added.

Maybe there may be more advanced renderers, that aren't confused by fiddling with newlines. Well, I work on multiple wikis. So I stick with standard features, and avoid relying on beta features, whenever possible. So I don't get into the habit of relying on beta features that were available on only some of the sites I use.

I find a lot of people who rely on semi-automated editing tools blindly follow the default, do not exercise human judgement, when they click OK.

I would really prefer if all robots and all semi-automated editing aids left newlines exactly as-is, unless fiddling with them is absolutely unavoidable.

Is there a reason your tool stripped the newlines in this instance? Geo Swan (talk) 05:49, 2 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Geo Swan: Hi! If you visit Template:Cite news#TemplateData you'll notice it says "This template prefers inline formatting of parameters". That means that the recommended format for that citation template is "inline". If instead it were "block", then ProveIt would automatically add the newlines. In short, ProveIt follows the recommended format, as defined in the template data. Sophivorus (talk) 12:50, 2 May 2020 (UTC)Reply
Okay. So what the heck do you think that means? What makes you think "inline formatting" means putting all fields on a single logical line? Why isn't a use of template which gives each field a logical line of its own also an instance of "inline formatting"? What would be the opposite of "inline formatting"? Would it be instance where the template, and some or all of its fields, were {{transcluded}}?
Even if, for the sake of argument, the contributor(s) who added support for the {{cite}} templates to the WMF software base had an esthetic preference for cramming all fields on a single line, what difference should that make to the rest of us?
It has been a long time since I went to University, but at the University I attended, by the time undergrads in computer science had their first semester mid-terms, they had heard, through the grapevine, that one of the two hardest courses they could take was Compiler Construction. They were told by other students that, if they took this course, they should take no other hard course that term, because that course alone would take up at least 40 hours per week. I wasn't a computer science student, but I was very good friends with a lot of them, and I sat through some introductory workshops on yacc and lex. I know that, when parsing tokens, whitespace is just whitespace. Programs are never going to care, or even notice, if tokens are separated by space, tabs, or newlines. So, please don't try to suggest there is a technical reason to prefer cramming all the fields onto a single line. I know any such claim is complete BS.
As a human contributor I do my best to follow our policies and guidelines -- our wikidocuments. When I edit an article, and come across {{cite}} templates that are broken, or have missing fields, I refrain from monkeying with them unnecessarily, even when it would make it easier, for me personally. I make this effort because I know if I insert newlines into the instance it will erode the usefulness of the diff engine for later readers. No one will be able to tell whether I merely inserted newlines, or if I also made actual corrections.
I would like to be able to expect other human contributors to make the same effort I do. During the golden age of the wikipedia, before most of our contributors who add actual new intellectual content were driven away, if a news alert took me back to an article I hadn't worked on for some time, there was a very good chance some other contributor added new intellectual content, and I would look forward to reading it.
Now, when I return to an article, after months or years, and request a diff showing the changes between the current version and the last version I worked on, the result will be lit up like a christmas tree. The simple volume of changes will make it impossible to see if the article's intellectual content was changed. So I sigh, and step through the different revisions, one at a time. This is extremely time consuming. And, nowadays, I generally find that 90%, 95%, or more of the revisions merely changed the article's metadata.
So, even if, for the sake of argument, the contributor(s) who added support for the {{cite}} templates to the WMF software base had an esthetic preference for cramming all fields on a single line, they would still be obliged to try to conform to the wikidocuments that urge us to refrain from unnecessarily rewriting templates, when they were editing as a human being. Their original authorship of support for the {{cite}} templates should count for nothing, as per WP:OWN. It should be what our wikidocuments say that counts. And our wikidocuments tell us to do our best to refrain from rewriting metadata for purely esthetic purposes. So, not only would the contributor who added support for {{cite}} be under the same obligation as the rest of us, that obligation should surely apply even more strongly to any bots he or she might write, wouldn't you agree? Geo Swan (talk) 14:06, 2 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

Module:Excerpt/l10n

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Firstly, my apologies if I've contributed to the harsh words you've been receiving elsewhere. Is Module:Excerpt/l10n still useful, or has it been replaced by Module:Excerpt/i18n? Certes (talk) 15:56, 15 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

No apology needed! Module:Excerpt/l10n is no longer useful and should be deleted, forgot about that... Sophivorus (talk) 23:01, 15 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

Excerpt error messages

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You asked in an edit summary: Is there a reason why Lua errors should be hidden from the output by default? The reason was to avoid big red error messages appearing on readers' screens. Module:Excerpt was initially intended only for portals, where the article to be transcluded is often chosen randomly. Most potential errors would not appear when previewing or even publishing the page, but would pop up unpredictably at some future time when a different article with an unhandled variant of the wikitext syntax was randomly selected. Perhaps the module is now stable enough for this not to be a problem; I'm not sure. Certes (talk) 21:10, 21 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Certes: Thanks for keeping an eye on the changes! Your concern is reasonable, so I restored the default behavior of the module. However, due to technical and design reasons, I changed the behavior of the error reporting mechanism so that in order to show errors, the "errors" parameter needs to be set to a truthy value such as "errors=1" rather than to an empty string. See the testcases at Template:Transclude_lead_excerpt/testcases. This change will require to update the documentation when the latest version goes live, but I trust this won't be an issue. Let me know if I overlooked something! Kind regards and thanks again, Sophivorus (talk) 15:53, 22 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

New transclusion philosophy pages

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Hi Sophivorus! Just wanted to give you a heads up that I recently created meta:Transclusionism. I also may end up updating WP:CONSOLIDATE at some point to make it go beyond infoboxes. I hope these can be places to further expand on the rationale behind why we're so enthusiastic about excerpts, and to point editors to when they have hesitations. Oh, and there's {{User transclusion}} if you want. Cheers! {{u|Sdkb}}talk 22:11, 21 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

Template editing

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Your account has been granted the "templateeditor" user permission, allowing you to edit templates and modules that have been protected with template protection. It also allows you to bypass the title blacklist, giving you the ability to create and edit editnotices. Before you use this user right, please read Wikipedia:Template editor and make sure you understand its contents. In particular, you should read the section on wise template editing and the criteria for revocation.

You can use this user right to perform maintenance, answer edit requests, and make any other simple and generally uncontroversial edits to templates, modules, and edinotices. You can also use it to enact more complex or controversial edits, after those edits are first made to a test sandbox, and their technical reliability as well as their consensus among other informed editors has been established. If you are willing to process edit requests on templates and modules, keep in mind that you are taking responsibility to ensure the edits have consensus and are technically sound.

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Useful links

Happy template editing! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:10, 23 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

If you have time, can you have a look at this and see if you can understand what the issue is? Thanks — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:43, 24 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

Wikipedia:Global rights policy issue

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Sophivorus, your protection of recent pages does not follow the Wikipedia:Protection policy, as the pages you protected are not actually high-risk pages. Additionally, there are plenty of local administrators that can adjust protection levels as appropriate and move tests in to production. As such, you should stop using your global interface editor access on the English Wikipedia. — xaosflux Talk 16:14, 30 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

Template:Transcluded section2

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I notice you have changed Template:Transcluded section2 to a redirect without any discussion. Your edit summary stated "after preparing said template to receive requests from this one without breakage and several tests" - what you appear to have overlooked however is that a redirect breaks any use of named references, which has prompted AnomieBOT to try and rescue these "orphaned" references, but in doing so creates duplicates - eg Electoral district of Macquarie. I have reverted your edit for the moment to restore the broken references. If, as you suggest, the template is functionally the same to Template:Excerpt, the better way to fix it is to replace it in the articles and only then change it into a redirect. --Find bruce (talk) 00:02, 3 June 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Find bruce: Ah, such a subtle issue! Template:Excerpt adds a prefix to reference names to avoid name conflicts when transcluding, but it seems that this same behavior causes problems with references that are meant to be called the same. Unfortunately I don't see a way to fix it yet. If I do, I'll be sure to post it in the talk page this time and let you know. Thanks for your kind message! Sophivorus (talk) 12:03, 3 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for your response. I actually like the fact that Excerpt deliberately avoids name conflicts as they can be really confusing, even for experienced editors. What is the prefix added by excerpt - ie is it consistent & predictable such that the transcluded page could include that? --Find bruce (talk) 00:47, 4 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
@Find bruce: Yes! The prefix is the title of the page from where the excerpt is coming, plus an empty space. Sophivorus (talk) 13:36, 4 June 2020 (UTC)Reply
Thanks, that seems to work on Electoral district of Macquarie. My WP time is currently tied up with a featured article review, but once that is done I will look at using AWB to change the template to excerpt & any reference to use the prefix. --Find bruce (talk) 23:04, 4 June 2020 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for your help in fixing the module - I have a basic understanding of templates but the complexity of modules is beyond me. Reminded me to update you on a work-around where references are meant to be the same where 2 articles are excerpted into a third - eg Electoral results for the district of Bingara where 1916 Bingara state by-election refers to the Results of the 1913 election. Excerpt doesn't change the name of references using {{refn}}, so I simply switched the 2 articles to use refn and tagged the substance of one reference as "noinclude". I used an alternative workaroud for 1904 Bingara state by-election by using refn where name="article title "& reference name Both work & I can't see any functional difference for preferring 1 over the other. --Find bruce (talk) 21:44, 24 February 2021 (UTC)Reply

Global watchlist - Update 7

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Nomination for merging of Template:Transcluded

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 Template:Transcluded has been nominated for merging with Template:Excerpt. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Soumya-8974 talk contribs subpages 08:17, 9 October 2020 (UTC)Reply

Maintenance tag for articles that could use excerpts

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I created {{Convert to transclusion}}, for tagging pages that ought to use excerpts. I'm not sure if the category is fully working as its supposed to, but just wanted to give you the FYI. It'd of course be better to actually fix up the pages, but as with other maintenance issues, identifying it is better than nothing. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 08:56, 31 October 2020 (UTC)Reply

Sdkb, good idea, I think I'll start using that template. Where can I see which articles have been given that tag so far? I wasn't sure how to look for them. Also, how do you deal with featured articles, I think there is a hesitancy for them to use excerpts. Otherwise, I would be tempted to add that tag to high level articles such as climate change and to earth for example. EMsmile (talk) 13:11, 23 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
@EMsmile You can see the articles with the tag from Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Convert to transclusion. As to excerpts on featured articles, I wouldn't worry much. Someone raised concerns once (or was it twice?) but I think that was it. There're many high level articles with excerpts already, such as COVID-19 pandemic, Africa, etc. Cheers! Sophivorus (talk) 13:30, 23 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
@EMsmile, I encountered some concern at a recent FAC about using excerpts, but I think it's hopefully just surmountable trepidation about a newer feature. I'll be taking the page back again soon, so if you watchlist this you can see how it unfolds.
Regarding adding excerpts to existing FAs, I'd like to see it, but I'd expect some challenges. First, given that editors tend to feel a level of ownership over their FAs, if they're opposed overall to the idea of excerpts, that's probably not a battle worth fighting. Second, there's a lot more pickiness about the precise wording at FAs than at less-developed pages. Inclusion control can help with this, but sometimes the different needs are irreconcilable. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 17:52, 23 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
When people do the featured article review they could then apply the same level of rigor to the transcluded text, therefore improving 2 articles (or more) at the same time, without even knowing it. So the aspect of pickiness should hopefully not really speak against having excerpts in the article. If we can resolve the watchlist issue then we'd take a big step forward, I think (see here).EMsmile (talk) 00:12, 24 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
The picky part comes in just because sometimes the ideal text at two different pages might not be exactly the same. For instance, perfect due weight at one might be four paragraphs, whereas at the other it might be three paragraphs that still cover the same information in just slightly less detail. At an FA, you're more likely to get complaints like "making this an excerpt will make it too long" that you wouldn't get at less finely tuned articles. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 02:30, 24 August 2021 (UTC)Reply
But perhaps people don't realise that the excerpt can be only certain paragraphs of the lead, even just some sentences. And it could be from anywhere, it doesn't even have to be from the lead. I am thinking of the climate change featured article which will invariably say something about sea level rise and ocean acidification. The exact wording and latest predictions for those phenomena should be most accurate in the two sub-articles and hence transcribed from there... EMsmile (talk) 02:42, 24 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

Module:Excerpt

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Is your recent edit to Module:Excerpt - update to latest, causing citation errors? Please see the talk page (§Named references), for examples listed there of recent citation errors detected. Thanks. Isaidnoway (talk) 12:21, 18 November 2020 (UTC)Reply

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Global watchlist - Update 8

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Global watchlist - Update 9

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Alerting members of WikiProjects to the usefulness of excerpts

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I've just added a link to your Wikimania presentaton about excerpts to the WikiProject Climate Change page here. I am wondering if there are other WikiProjects that ought to include advice on using excerpts in their resource pages for members of those WikiProjects. Another WikiProject that comes to mind is the one on Countries or WikiProject Medicine. Perhaps you have already interacted with some WikiProjects? EMsmile (talk) 13:15, 23 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

@EMsmile Awesome! No, I haven't interacted with WikiProjects yet, but sounds like a good idea! I just added it to my task list, thanks! Sophivorus (talk) 13:34, 23 August 2021 (UTC)Reply

Nomination for deletion of Template:WikiWidget

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 Template:WikiWidget has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Did Q28 make a mess today? 04:54, 6 November 2021 (UTC)Reply

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Copying within Wikipedia requires attribution

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  Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. It appears that you copied or moved text from Existence of God into Argument from inconsistent revelations. While you are welcome to re-use Wikipedia's content, here or elsewhere, Wikipedia's licensing does require that you provide attribution to the original contributor(s). When copying within Wikipedia, this is supplied at minimum in an edit summary at the page into which you've copied content, disclosing the copying and linking to the copied page, e.g., copied content from [[page name]]; see that page's history for attribution. It is good practice, especially if copying is extensive, to also place a properly formatted {{copied}} template on the talk pages of the source and destination. Please provide attribution for this duplication if it has not already been supplied by another editor, and if you have copied material between pages before, even if it was a long time ago, you should provide attribution for that also. You can read more about the procedure and the reasons at Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia. Thank you. If you are the sole author of the prose that was copied, attribution is not required. — Diannaa (talk) 15:30, 24 December 2021 (UTC)Reply

@Diannaa Hi, thanks for the heads-up! I attributed credit through a hyperlink in the edit summary but in the future I'll add the "see that page's history for attribution" for clarity. Thanks! Sophivorus (talk) 17:37, 24 December 2021 (UTC)Reply
I must have missed that edit summary. Sorry about that. But you are correct when you say that the full phrase is what the guideline calls for. So best to be complete. Cheers.— Diannaa (talk) 21:10, 24 December 2021 (UTC)Reply

RfC about using excerpts within the context of climate change articles

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I am just wondering if you saw the WP:RfC about using excerpts within the context of climate change articles, see here? I'd be very interested to hear your viewpoints as the majority of people so far seem to say "should not be used for GA or FA articles; should not be used when the leads have too few citations" etc. EMsmile (talk) 11:54, 22 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

@EMsmile Replied, thanks for the poke. Sophivorus (talk) 14:28, 22 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

A barnstar for your efforts

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  COVID-19 Barnstar
Awarded for efforts in expanding and verifying articles related to COVID-19. Awarded by Cdjp1 (talk) 8 March 2022 (UTC)

@Cdjp1 More often than not, a message in my talk page means either a request or bad news, so your barnstar was a breath of fresh air, thanks!! Sophivorus (talk) 14:00, 9 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

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Qick ProveIt Question

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Hi @Sophivorus, can you tell me why cite interview and cite magazine have a different appearance in ProveIt compared to cite news, cite web etc.?
 
Thanks, Nobody (talk) 07:11, 13 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

@1AmNobody24 Hi! Sorry for the delayed response. The reason is that Proveit uses the required fields to generate the reference snippet, and cite interview and cite magazine don't have any required fields according to their template data. If you think they should, just edit their template data, mark some fields as required (probably the title) and Proveit will catch up in a few minutes. Cheers! Sophivorus (talk) 13:06, 3 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
Hi @Sophivorus, Thanks for the answer, that makes sense. But it seems that cite magazine has required parameters (date, title, magazine), am I missing something or is that wrong then? Nobody (talk) 13:14, 3 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
@1AmNobody24 Ah, yes, you're right. Proveit was programmed so that only required fields of type "string" were considered, but I just changed that so that it also accepts fields of type "content". Now both magazine and interview snippets are displaying fine for me. It may take a few more minutes for the cache to catch up, but let me know if they display ok for you too. Cheers! Sophivorus (talk) 14:08, 3 July 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Sophivorus I just checked it: Magazine, interview, journal now all work. Thank you for fixing this. Nobody (talk) 14:18, 3 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

ProveIt

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Hey Sophivorus, could you take a look at the ProveIt repo whenever you have time? I submitted a patch on Nov 1 and it hasn't been merged yet. Thanks. — MaterialWorks 12:13, 11 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

@MaterialWorks Hi, sorry for the delay. I just reviewed your change, tested it, merged it and deployed it. Thanks! It should take a few minutes to go through the cache, cheers! Sophivorus (talk) 20:33, 11 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Sophivorus - #ProveIt is causing articles edited with it to come up on the check date report. From what I've seen, it's changing the dates to YYYY-MM which isn't a valid entry for the field and kicks an error. Can this be adjusted?

Examples:

I can give you more if you need a larger sample. I don't know (since I haven't used your tool) if it's a user error or if this is something in the tool itself.

Any assistance is appreciated. OIM20 (talk) 10:54, 23 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

@OIM20: Check out Wikipedia talk:ProveIt § Dates very often invalid. – Hilst [talk] 11:22, 23 March 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Hilst - Thanks. OIM20 (talk) 11:27, 23 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

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A barnstar for you!

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  The Technical Barnstar
It looks like you created the Conway's Game of Life gadget over on eswiki, which was recently brought over here. Nice work! A lovely piece of unusual interactivity. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 03:18, 5 June 2024 (UTC)Reply