Wiktionary:Grease pit

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A grease pit

Welcome to the Grease pit!

This is an area to complement the Beer parlour and Tea room. Its purpose is specifically for discussing the future development of the English Wiktionary, both as a dictionary and thesaurus and as a website.

The Grease pit is a place to discuss technical issues such as templates, Lua modules, CSS, JavaScript, the MediaWiki software, extensions to it, abuse filters, Toolforge, etc. It is also the second-best place, after the Beer parlor, to think in non-technical ways about how to make the best, free, open online dictionary of “all words in all languages”.

Others have understood this page to explain the “how” of things, while the Beer parlour addresses the “why”.

Permanent notice

• Tips and tricks about customization or personalization of CSS and JS files are listed at WT:CUSTOM.
• Other tips and tricks are at WT:TAT.
• Find information and helpful links about modules, Lua in general, and the Scribunto extension at WT:LUA.
• Everyone is encouraged to expand both pages, or to come up with more such stuff. Other known pages with “tips-n-tricks” are to be listed here as well.
  
  

Grease pit archives edit
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March 2025

{{quote-song}} fails to put a comma before "performed by..." for non-album songs

If {{quote-song}} is used without the |album= parameter but with the |artist= parameter, it fails to put the grammatically-necessary comma between the song name and "performed by [artist name]"; an example of this [mis]behavior can be seen in the third quotation of call off. Could someone please fix this? Whoop whoop pull up ^{♀️ Bitching Betty 🏳️‍⚧️ Averted crashes ⚧️} 02:43, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

Missing audios

I'd like a list with the English entries missing audio, ranked by the number of Derived terms they have (let's say, down to any entries with more than 5 Derived terms). For example fibular, with 12 DTs and no audio, is likely to rank quite highly. diol, with 27 DTs, is a strong candidate for a top-3 spot, but there's probably some audioless chemistry term with more DTs. Perhaps WT:Todo/Missing audio by DTs is a good name. Thanks in advance! Vipgame321 (talk) 10:07, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

Top 3?? With only 27 DTs, diol doesn't even make the top 150. You've got some work to do! Note: "missing audio" specifically means that the text {{audio|en does not appear in the English part of the page - it may contain an audio with a mislabeled language code. DTs are counted as the number of non-named parameters inside {{col*}} or {{der*}} plus the count of any {{l}} or {{m}} templates not inside other templates. JeffDoozan (talk) 14:09, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

Lovely! I'll look how to prioritise these.... Fancy, I never know there were 112 types of bedstraw. TBF, I didn't know such a term existed. Vipgame321 (talk) 14:21, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

San Antonio

There seems to be a serious problem with Places in the Philippines, where hundreds of barangays have been entered. The system seems to have run out of steam between barangay 144 and 145. DonnanZ (talk) 14:07, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

Something like this was eventually gonna happen! I think this is a case of WT (or in particular the baran-guy [geddit???]) being overly thorough. Vipgame321 (talk) 15:38, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

It'd be hilarious to RFV each of the places, one day at a time. Vipgame321 (talk) 15:47, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

That would give RfV indigestion too. DonnanZ (talk) 17:12, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

I mentioned this to @Benwing2 yesterday. Aside from over 200 uses of {{place}} on the page, each of the barangays has a list template with all the neighboring barangays. The list templates were already stretching things, and the edits to the place modules just pushed it over the limit. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:41, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

I did edit the page a couple of days ago, when I moved the US entries above the barangays. They were below them. That may have triggered things off, but no bytes were added. DonnanZ (talk) 19:32, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz With the latest updates to {{place}} it seems to be taking a bit more time, which is now making Santo Niño time out as well. I think the idea of using mw.loadData() will fix these issues; I'll get to this in the next couple of days at the latest, as I have some other requests as well that people are pinging me about ... Benwing2 (talk) 22:20, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

User:Fenakhay has removed the barangay content from both these pages. I don't mind, what about others? DonnanZ (talk) 09:22, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

R:pl:Kokowski1903

I'm not sure if this place is the right to ask, or if ortographic dictionaries are even added as reference templates, but perhaps it could complement {{R:pl:NFJP}}, because NFJP based its listings on this dictionary's (non)inclusion. AFAIK it's also PD in both Poland and the USA because Władysław Kokowski died 1926, so perhaps its words can also be added to a "wanted" list. See: Kokowski, Władysław (1903) Słownik ortograficzny języka polskiego [Ortographic Dictionary of the Polish Language]‎^[1] (in Polish) (non-fiction; paperback), Warszawa—Łódź: nakł[ad]. Ludwika Fiszera (w tłoczni F. M. Kulisza), published 1903, →OCLC, → Google Books.

Thank you, 91.94.104.126 22:13, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Frequency lists/Nepali 1-5000 and Wiktionary:Frequency lists/Nepali 5001-10000

These were the only pages using a single-use template that we decided to delete, so @Ultimateria replaced {{ne-l}} with {{l|ne}} in both pages. This apparently increased the system overhead to the point that they now are unviewable: they not only use more Lua-execution time than allowed, but they exceed the system's 60-second total time for loading the page.

I turned off previewing before editing, copied the content of both pages to text files on my computer, and preceded to split the text into pages of 1000 instances of "l|ne|" each, documenting the source of each in edit summaries to preserve the attribution, and added a very rudimentary navigation table at the top, which I'm reproducing here so you can follow the links to the pages:

1-1000	1001-2000	2001-3000	3001-4000	4001-5000
5001-6000	6001-7000	7001-8000	8001-9000	9001-10000

So far, so good. Now the question arises as to what we do next:

1. Do we simply delete the two unusable old pages?

   If we do, then the attribution in the edit summaries points to nonexistent files.

2. Do we remove the content from the two files and make them (rather stubby) indexes for navigating to the files created from them?
3. Or do we do some kind of move and history-merge routine with each of the parent files and one of their daughter files so the original names and revisions are preserved in the edit histories?

I only spent a couple of hours on this, so I don't really care that much about how it turns out, and I'm sure there are other options. The main considerations are to not leave the pages in CAT:E, and to preserve attribution for whatever pages we end up with (unless we decide to delete everything).

What does everyone think we should do? Chuck Entz (talk) 02:24, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

I replaced {{l|ne}} with wikitext on the original pages so they're no longer throwing errors. Maybe that's good enough for preserving the usefulness of the list and the history. If not, feel free to revert. JeffDoozan (talk) 20:29, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't realize it put the pages in Cat:E. Thank you both for cleaning this up. Ultimateria (talk) 00:27, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-10

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

• All logged-in editors using the mobile view can now edit a full page. The "Edit full page" link is accessible from the "More" menu in the toolbar. This was previously only available to editors using the Advanced mobile contributions setting. [2]
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• The previously noted update to Single User Login, which will accommodate browser restrictions on cross-domain cookies by moving login and account creation to a central domain, will now roll out to all users during March and April. The team plans to enable it for all new account creation on Group0 wikis this week. See the SUL3 project page for more details and an updated timeline.
• Since last week there has been a bug that shows some interface icons as black squares until the page has fully loaded. It will be fixed this week. [8]
• One new wiki has been created: a Wikipedia in Sylheti (w:syl:) [9]
• View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a bug was fixed with loading images in very old versions of the Firefox browser on mobile. [10]

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• 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 02:30, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Etymon on fish entry?

I don't know if this is the right place for this, but I'm really hesitant to make any edits to a page as well-established as fish is. However, the lack of an etymon template on the page is causing downstream issues (see, for example, jellyfish) where back-tracing is not possible due to this (Theoretically. In practice there *is* a table, but it's still showing up in [[Category:English entries referencing etymons with invalid ids|Invalid IDS]] which I'm not entirely sure how the table was generated if there was an invalid ID. Would it be a good idea/acceptable to add etymons to the fish page? Again, I'm hesitant to make any edits on a page like that because of the fact I'm a new editor. Froglegseternal (talk) 06:58, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

@Froglegseternal:  Done. J3133 (talk) 08:51, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

@Froglegseternal: Just so you know: we don't have a concept of "well-established" pages or anything like Wikipedia's article rating system. You can edit whatever pages you like (although in some cases you have to be careful when a definition is politically controversial). In fact, pages like fish and other common English words often have the most room for improvement. Just recently I reorganized the basic definitions of light to make the distinction between visible light and ultraviolet/infrared explicit. Thank you for your contributions! Ioaxxere (talk) 16:16, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

Ref template help

On Template:R:RE, I wish to convert a parameter's numeral values into Roman numerals. E.g. if the user inserts 5, result in V. How to do this?

I also want to modify the word "column"/"columns" based on the kind of input. This can probably be done with regex but I don't know the syntax. E.g. [0-9]+ --> "column", else "columns". Or some simpler way? Danny lost (talk) 10:19, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

@Danny lost: you can check for and convert an Arabic to a Roman numeral like this: {{uc:{{#if:{{num|{{{parameter|}}}}}|{{A2R|{{{parameter}}}}}|{{{parameter}}}}}}}. I don't understand your second question—can you clarify? — Sgconlaw (talk) 20:21, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you.

About the second question: I want the template to print the word column if a single column number is cited, NNNN, but columns if one cites a range of columns with a hyphen, or the column number NNNN ff, or ones separated by commas, etc. Danny lost (talk) 06:29, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

@Danny lost: oh, right. I'm not sure whether this can be done with just wikitext. You could see if one of the modules in "Module:string" or "Module:string utilities" can help you. Alternatively, just provide both parameters in the template and leave it to the user to select the correct one. — Sgconlaw (talk) 10:04, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

On CirrusSearch

How can I look for pages whose titles end in a said string of letters? I cannot seem to find an alternative to the prefix: keyword. Saumache (talk) 18:07, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Search line: intitle:/titleend/ -intitle:/titleend./ The period stands for any character. Apparently the entry title does not have any whitespace characters at the end. DCDuring (talk) 18:23, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

"The period stands for any character." I'm not very familiar with CirrusSearch yet, how am I supposed to type it? Something like intitle:/titleend"..."/? Saumache (talk) 19:42, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Put your search term in for "titleend" in both locations and a period (".") after the second use. CirrusSearch uses regular expressions ("regexes"). In regular expression "." stands for any character. The first part of the search line above means "entry with title containing "titleend", the second part means not containing any character following "titleend". MW help discusses use of regexes in Cirrus Search. DCDuring (talk) 22:13, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

I see, thank you. Saumache (talk) 23:12, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Images without captions

A picture says a thousand words, so they say. According to my calculations, a picture accompanied by a few explanatory words is worth 69,666 words. Like on pear-shaped, where there was a pic, I thought it was vandalism. Just wond'ring if we can make a list of other captionless images. WT:Todo/only 1000 words would be a catchy page name. Wars at my door (talk) 22:21, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

A search for insource:/\[\[(File|Image):[^|]*\|\s*thumb\s*[|]?\s*\]\]/ can do this. JeffDoozan (talk) 11:48, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

Inaccurate message on deletion log page

Wiktionary:Deletion_log says "Early records can be found at Wiktionary:Deletion log Archive 2003-2004", but this is untrue: that page has been deleted itself. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:9425:3A9A:6C7F:8407 20:36, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

I don't understand the reason for deleting Wiktionary:Deletion log Archive 2003-2004. It provided historical information not available elsewhere. This, that and the other, could you explain your reasoning? Your deletion reason mentions WT:RFDO, but I don't see a discussion there or at Wiktionary talk:Deletion log Archive 2003-2004. — Eru·tuon 22:11, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Ah, found the vote at Wiktionary talk:Block log. — Eru·tuon 22:16, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes, not the strongest consensus in the world, but it's there. I won't be upset if you undelete it. This, that and the other (talk) 22:20, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

I would personally undelete the deletion log as it's possibly of use; the block log seems pointless to keep though. Benwing2 (talk) 22:32, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Adding month headers for RFV/RFD pages

I've noticed that month headers for RFV/RFD pages do not get added automatically. This seems to be a simple enough task for a bot to do. @JeffDoozan, would this be something doable for you? — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 22:39, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

Inferior wiki platform? Yep.

Attempted to add a discussion pageto the entry: "As one shall sow, so shall he reap"

What i added:

Also worth notation: as you sow, so shall you reap is a quote from The Constitution of Medina signed in the year 622 CE, a doctrine laid out among tribes of the holy land, bringing together Muslims and Jews.

From Wikipedia: "The Constitution of Medina (Arabic صحيفة or al-Madina; Watiqat romanized: ,وثيقة المدينة dwI, Sahĩfat al-Madīna; also known as the Umma Document),[1] is a document dealing with tribal affairs during the Islamic prophet Muhammad's time in Medina[2] and formed the basis of a multi-religious state under his leadership.[3][4][5][6] Many tribal groups are mentioned, including the Banu Najjar and Quraysh, as well as many tribal institutions, like vengeance, blood money, ransom, alliance, and clientage.[7] The Constitution of Medina has striking resemblances with Surah 5 (Al-Ma'idah) of the Quran,. [8]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Medina — This unsigned comment was added by 73.3.64.125 (talk) at 08:51, 9 March 2025.

I'm afraid it's not clear what you want to do, or how it is relevant to the Wiktionary. — Sgconlaw (talk) 19:00, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

“Harmful” edit

My edit to Mayakultur, which added these quotes: […] were marked as “harmful”, matching some sport abuse rule or something, and the editor won't let me through. What's going on? Oh, I can't paste it to grease either, paste it is https://pst.moe/paste/wuybsg

Thank you, 91.94.111.188 01:21, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

I've made the edit on your behalf. Unfortunately we can't alter the abuse rule in question. Please create an account for yourself to avoid these kinds of issues in future. This, that and the other (talk) 06:21, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

darmstadtium and Template:def-uncertain

Why do pages like darmstadtium and cheap show up in the Whatlinkshere of Template:def-uncertain as linking to (not transcluding) that template? Those two pages do not appear to link to (nor use) the template, unless I am missing something. - -sche (discuss) 08:43, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

Category:Terms derived from taxonomic name by language

This has a module error saying 'The raw label "Taxonomic name" does not exist', but it has subcategories without the error. There are, however, other taxonomic name (and taxonomic names) categories that do have the error. These are all populated by templates that have no problem adding the categories based on the Translingual (mul) variety code "mul-tax".

Apparently, this is happening only in the root derivation categories: there are no language-specific categories in CAT:E

I haven't tracked down the module change that's causing this, but it has to have been in the past few days. Pinging @Benwing2 and @Theknightwho.Chuck Entz (talk) 13:34, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz I'll take a look. Benwing2 (talk) 19:05, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz Believe it or not, the cause of this is that @0DF created Category:Taxonomic name using a raw {{auto cat}} call without the proper |lect=1 and such params. I fixed this and the errors should be gone although there's still some cleanup work to make sure the categories display correctly. Benwing2 (talk) 20:16, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz, Benwing2: My apologies. What should I be doing differently? 0DF (talk) 12:12, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

@0DF I think a good rule of thumb is to preview any call to {{auto cat}}, and not save if it shows a category tree error. Sometimes you need a parameter to be added; e.g. sub-lect categories need |lect=1 and sometimes other params, and languages need the location(s) where the language is spoken to be given. This is all documented on the {{auto cat}} documentation page. Benwing2 (talk) 20:26, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Right you are. I just created Category:Varieties of Translingual with just {{auto cat}}, and that seems fine. Or is there something I'm missing? I noticed that that category has the two subcategories Category:Terms derived from taxonomic name by language and Category:Terms derived from taxonomic names by language; I would assume we only want the (grammatically correct) latter. Any idea why both versions exist? 0DF (talk) 13:52, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

@0DF If {{auto cat}} with no params doesn't throw an error, and the output looks correct on a casual glance, it's probably fine. The main thing to be aware of is lect pages, where you can write {{auto cat|lect=1}} and not get an error, but the description and parents may not be sensible unless you add more params (this is one of the reasons you need to specify |lect=1 for such pages; otherwise people would just willy-nilly create the pages with bare {{auto cat}}, leading to nonsensical descriptions and parents). In general, pages that need param help much or most of the time will throw an error if you don't supply any params rather than supply a default that's probably wrong. In this case, pages of the form "Varieties of LANG" work fine with bare {{auto cat}}; what doesn't work is specific lect pages (Taxonomic name(s) is considered a variety of Translingual). As for taxonomic name vs. taxonomic names, this is half-fixed, which is why this is happening. The ungrammatical pages are coming from {{etymon}}, which hasn't yet been fixed to output grammatical category names in this case (it's on my big to-do list or maybe @Ioaxxere could fix this). Benwing2 (talk) 07:23, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

@Benwing2: To be honest, I had no idea that now we had language names that could be pluralized. Currently there's a FIXME saying that we should use :getDisplayForm() which I imagine would be the fix in this case. Ioaxxere (talk) 13:58, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

@Benwing2: Thanks for the explanation. I'll be more careful in future. 0DF (talk) 01:34, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-11

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

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• Editors who use password managers at multiple wikis may notice changes in the future. The way that our wikis provide information to password managers about reusing passwords across domains has recently been updated, so some password managers might now offer you login credentials that you saved for a different Wikimedia site. Some password managers already did this, and are now doing it for more Wikimedia domains. This is part of the SUL3 project which aims to improve how our unified login works, and to keep it compatible with ongoing changes to the web-browsers we use. [11][12]
• The Wikipedia Apps Team is inviting interested users to help improve Wikipedia’s offline and limited internet use. After discussions in Afrika Baraza and the last ESEAP call, key challenges like search, editing, and offline access are being explored, with upcoming focus groups to dive deeper into these topics. All languages are welcome, and interpretation will be available. Want to share your thoughts? Join the discussion or email aramadan@wikimedia.org!
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on March 19. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks.
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• The latest quarterly Growth newsletter is available. It includes: the launch of the Community Updates module, the most recent changes in Community Configuration, and the upcoming test of in-article suggestions for first-time editors.
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MediaWiki message delivery 23:09, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

"Script" code for unwritten languages

I've been chipping away at Category:Terms in nonstandard scripts by language, and there are many of the subcategories that are there solely due to the fact that there is no script given for the language in the modules. In such cases, I would argue that, without a standard, "nonstandard" is meaningless.

That quibble aside, I've been clearing some of these where there the language is known to be attested in writing, but no one has gotten around to adding the script used to the modules. That leaves languages with no written attestation and no indication that they have ever been written except in scholarly works describing the language or by mentions in texts in other languages.

I would like to propose that we have some way to designate that a language is known to have never been directly attested in writing, and turn off the "nonstandard script" tagging for that language. I think it's useful to keep track of the difference between a strictly oral language and one where no one has entered a script code in the modules yet.

I'm not sure whether it would be better to create a dummy script called "none" or "noscript", or to have a separate parameter like "|noscript=1", but it would save us a lot of clutter in the maintenance categories. Once we do that, and figure out how to deal with entries for diacritics in isolation as well as list-box-type categories that link the wrong things (e.g., a number box that links to "3" instead of to the term for "3" in the language), these categories would be much more realistic and useful. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:45, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

When standardizedly written in scholarly works, they still have a script, no? Especially Latin and Cyrillic, sometimes Arabic, and I assume Chinese script. Literacy is also a spectrum. Essentially all MSAL are unwritten but at the same time speakers have learned to write Arabic and write their minority languages in it if asked too, and for some woke ideological consideration their memorized poetry is recorded in Arabic script, strangely called oral—{{R:sqt:CSOL}}, {{RQ:sqt:CSOL}}, where both Latin and Arabic versions are present—and moved to Arabic script, Category:Soqotri lemmas, while Mehri and the other MSAL lemmas are still in Latin script. Any script that makes sense is added, isn’t it.

Certain ancient languages are often or only attested by mention in badly transcribed texts of any kind, the like you mention, and if they are only attested there we add Greek and Latin script, → Category:Dacian language, and if often then also then also the native script, → Category:Punic language, actually written in Latin script later, while the mentions in Roman or Hellene texts are so unreliably that inclusion as mainspace entries is not recommended by me, though some say that the Appendix namespace is where words go die, nonetheless “Old Persian” gangaba was deleted. And if a language is only reconstructed we also only add Latin script.

So I kind of don’t see a gap here; for clarity it might be advisable to have two kinds of parameters added to script parameters to state that a script is only added due to scholarly use or due to transcription in non-scholarly texts, or one kind if that is not wished to be distinguished at all, or a “transcription script” field. You are thinking complicated already. Fay Freak (talk) 19:29, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz: If a language is unwritten, and cannot be written, then we cannot document it. If we can, then we do it in a script, and that script is apparently the script in which the language is from that point onward written. Thadh (talk) 19:37, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

@Thadh let me give you an example: Category:Khumi Chin lemmas contains 398 pages. Category:Terms with Khumi Chin translations contains 15 pages. Category:Khumi Chin terms in nonstandard scripts contains 460 pages, including everything in the two other categories plus at least 47 others. That's because every single template that links to anything with the cnk language code adds the page it's on to Category:Khumi Chin terms in nonstandard scripts, because there is no script specified in the modules. I have no way to tell if any speaker of Kumi Chin has ever written anything in the language. There are no doubt linguists and/or ethnographers who have interviewed native speakers and compiled word lists, texts and descriptions of the grammar, but that's description, not use. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:19, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Our 'script' parameter is not what the speakers use, but what we use or can potentially use. It should be set to Latin script. Thadh (talk) 06:36, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree with Thadh here. But in general, I would want to see some kind of way of indicating that a particular script has been added to a language purely as a convenience to Wiktionary editors, so that this fact can be made clear in the metadata table at the "LANG language" category page. Or did that ship sail long enough ago that it would be too difficult to backfill this for other languages? This, that and the other (talk) 07:31, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm afraid that ship has sailed indeed. For Khumi Chin, by the way, the orthography is also not from thin air, it follows the description by the main source of a Latin-script orthography for the language. Although it would not surprise me if this orthography has never been used by the speakers themselves, as is often the case with this kind of languages. Thadh (talk) 12:41, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Why disallowed?

I tried to add a Katharine Hayhoe website to the definition of "global weirding", and it was flagged as harmful. Why? 2604:3D09:D083:3A00:D9EB:20AC:A751:F047 14:04, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your interest, but your contribution is not really in scope for this project. Thanks. This, that and the other (talk) 06:38, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Cannot create new entries due to a hoax error

As of now, I cannot create entries because of the following error: „Warning: Your edit contains a header that begins with a lowercase letter (a-z). Please capitalize it. A brief description of the abuse rule which your action matched is: uncapitalized header. If you believe your edit was flagged in error, you may report it on the Wiktionary:Grease pit.“ Reordcraeft (talk) 00:57, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

@Reordcraeft: The error is pretty clear. You typed declension instead of Declension. — Fenakhay ^{(حيطي · مساهماتي)} 01:17, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification. I failed to see that it was related to what‘s technically a subheader, as the header was fine. Reordcraeft (talk) 13:54, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

@Reordcraeft: Wiktionary:Entry layout uses the term heading, but I am not sure if the error should be changed. J3133 (talk) 14:24, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

We could have it say "header (or subheader)" to avoid this sort of confusion in the future. MedK1 (talk) 13:07, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Option to remove comma in pseudo loans

The template {{pseudo-loan}}) currently includes a comma after the type of pseudo-loan (ex. wasei eigo, Pseudo-Hispanisms). This is useful in full sentences, its default use. However, on pages like 輕小說／轻小说 (qīngxiǎoshuō), where it's part of another sentence (using |nocap=), the comma should be removed. Could an admin or template editor edit Module:affix/pseudo-loan to either remove the comma with |nocap= or add a new parameter to remove the comma? Pinging @Benwing2 as they've made most of the contributions to that module. Ookap (talk) 20:48, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Links to non-existing Arabic root pages no longer red

Links to Arabic roots which don't have a page used to be red but now they are black, see. e.g. شقي - look at the root box on the right. It's black but if you click on the link the page does not exist. tbm (talk) 03:45, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

To add, if I go to [13] the link to the root is red. tbm (talk) 03:47, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

The root box table has been modified to contain the class="inflection-table" CSS class. This class shows blue links in blue and red links in black; it's designed to make the typical proliferation of red links in inflection tables less distracting. The root box is, of course, not an inflection table, but the class has been applied nonetheless.

I note that you're reporting the issue but you haven't explained whether you think this is a bad change. Could you elaborate on that? This, that and the other (talk) 04:08, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@This, that and the other I think it's a bad change for two reasons:

1) Black suggests the page exists, but it doesn't, so I waste time by clicking on it. Red makes it clear what's going on.

2) It's inconsistent with other pages. The category link I mentioned ("Arabic terms belonging to the root") shows it in red. Why is it red there but black in the root box?

Can I ask why you think this is a good change? What's the advantage of having this black instead or red like it used to be? I can see some arguments for making "typical proliferation of red links in inflection tables less distracting" but I don't see how that argument applies to root boxes at all. tbm (talk) 05:22, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

I would have said it was a neutral change. You can still tell whether the root page exists or not, it's just black instead of red. (Moreover I didn't make the change.)

However, thinking about it some more, what we should be asking is, how much does it matter that the linked page doesn't exist? For an item in an inflection table, the answer is either "not at all, as the inflection table tells me everything the non-lemma form entry would if it existed", or "it only means I can't view the auto-generated pronunciation of the non-lemma form". I guess Arabic root pages contain a bit more info than that though. So, by this thinking, a red link is preferable. This, that and the other (talk) 06:49, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@This, that and the other I'm not sure I follow your comment: "You can still tell whether the root page exists or not, it's just black instead of red." But black isn't the standard way to indicate a page doesn't exist. There's a reason it's called a red link. Maybe I misunderstood your comment, though. tbm (talk) 07:59, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Tbm sorry, it was a bit of an strange sentence. I meant "you can still tell that a page doesn't exist, the link is just black instead of red". Black is the standard way to indicate that a page in an inflection table doesn't exist, but a root box isn't really an inflection table. I think we've actually arrived at a point of furious agreement. This, that and the other (talk) 20:31, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

The existence of root pages is optional and doesn’t add much value. Personally, I find them more of a nuisance. That’s why I made them black instead of red—some people might be tempted to create them just because they appear as red links, often with minimal information or errors.

@Tbm, why do you think they should be red? If a root page exists, it appears blue; otherwise, it doesn’t. — Fenakhay ^{(حيطي · مساهماتي)} 23:30, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

using <tr> unintentionally creates a link to the talk page

(rewritten with better demonstration)

 {{desc|ybe|<tr:qara>}} 

outputs

Western Yugur: Wiktionary:Grease pit (qara)

Zbutie3.14 (talk) 16:59, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

It doesn't happen when there is text before the <tr:> for example

 {{desc|ybe|word<tr:qara>}} 

outputs

Western Yugur: word (qara)

Zbutie3.14 (talk) 17:03, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@Zbutie3.14: I think this is because if no value is given to the second parameter, the template defaults to the page title. In the example you gave above, it would be this current page. Why would you use {{desc}} without specifying the second parameter? — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:38, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

It is so that it says [script needed]. It works fine when it is a normal parameter instead of inline:

 {{desc|ybe|tr=qara}} 

outputs

Western Yugur: [script needed] (qara)

...

I created a discussion on the desc template https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Template_talk:descendant#Using_inline_parameter_with_no_first_parameter_creates_link_to_talk_page Zbutie3.14 (talk) 22:25, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Trying to create page

Trying to create "pick 'em" but getting the errors: xwiki wrong language and gambling spam. I know the latter is obvious, since the word has to do with gambling (though wondering how to get around this, since I'm not adding spam, but a legitimate definition). Don't know what's up with the xwiki wrong language, however. Soulbust (talk) 22:01, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@Soulbust it's a good entry, thank you for creating it. The filter that you hit is a global Wikimedia-wide filter over which we have no control, unfortunately. This, that and the other (talk) 23:55, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Ah okay. I saw you created the page and while I appreciate that, I was wondering how I would be able to create pages myself in this situation? Soulbust (talk) 09:32, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Soulbust after you've built up your reputation by making a few more constructive edits to other entries, it's unlikely these filters will trouble you. This, that and the other (talk) 21:28, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Help with categorizing reference template

I just created Template:R:kdr:A Crimean Karaim-English Dictionary and used it on qara but now qara is included on https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Karaim_reference_templates Zbutie3.14 (talk) 22:11, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@Zbutie3.14: see my edit to the template. The category needs to be on the documentation subpage, not on the template page itself. — Sgconlaw (talk) 22:48, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

{{doublet}}

This is a minor issue, but could {{doublet}} be updated so that it accepts |t= as a parameter when there is only one term specified, instead of |t1=? This would make it mirror similar templates like {{l}} and {{m}}. Thanks. — Sgconlaw (talk) 02:23, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Template:transclude - inconsistent capitalization, undocumented parameters

I noticed the following while using {{tcl}}:

1. In some entries, the parenthesized gloss starts with a capital letter, in others with a small one. See Afganisztán and Indonézia.
2. The parameters place_official and place_capital are used but they are not documented. Are there any other undocumented parameters?
3. After the above two parameters, the language code has to be added: place_official=hu:Official Country Name in Hungarian. Is this necessary? Could the script take the language code from the second parameter?
4. There is a categorization issue. Three categories should be added (Countries, Countries in [Continent name], [Country name, same as entry title]). However, in some entries, only the Countries in [Continent name] is added by the template, the other two has to be added using {{C}}. The issue appears in entries where there are a lot of other FL sections.

Panda10 (talk) 16:32, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Added item 4 above. Panda10 (talk) 20:32, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

For #4: I think I figured it out - it's because of the Lua error during preview when I don't see the other two categories, but after saving they show up. Panda10 (talk) 20:37, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Panda10 I will fix these. #3 is already supposed to work that way without the language code, does it not? #1 depends on whether an old-syle or new-style place description is used in the source, but I can just lowercase the first character fo the new-style place description. #2 is a documentation issue and #4 appears to be not a real issue; let me know if you run into issues with categorization that don't go away when you save the full page. Benwing2 (talk) 06:44, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

FYI I fixed the handling of neighborhoods. E.g. formerly Erzsébetváros categorized under Category:hu:Neighbourhoods in Hungary but now it categorizes under Category:hu:Neighbourhoods of Budapest. You only get Category:hu:Neighbourhoods in Hungary for neighbo(u)rhoods of cities that the module doesn't specifically recognize. (Budapest is the only city in Hungary that the module currently knows about, but more could be added.) Benwing2 (talk) 06:49, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Also, if you're wondering, each country has a "british_spelling" flag that determines whether to use "neighborhoods" or "neighbourhoods". In the absence of good info on the web as to which variety of English predominates in which country, I used as an initial pass the following simple algorithm for assigning the value of this flag:

1. All countries in Europe use British spelling.
2. All other countries that were former British colonies use British spelling (except of course the US).
3. All other countries use American spelling.

If it is known that a particular country's predominant variety of English does not follow these rules, the setting can (naturally) be changed.

Benwing2 (talk) 07:00, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

@Benwing2 Yes, #3 is now working without the language code for the Hungarian official name. For #1, I provided two examples (Afganisztán and Indonézia), I believe both use the new-style place description but the former's gloss still starts with a capital. Thank you very much for all the improvements and their detailed explanation. Panda10 (talk) 16:34, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Tables are no longer scrollable

Conjugation and declension tables are no longer scrollable. This is terrible for mobile device users as half the information, or more, is no longer viewable.

This might be a new default as it is occurring across several languages.

I had posted this on the Information Board. I shall attempt to remove it. First time posting. FPanon (talk) 21:20, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

I still can scroll tables at entries like deutsch and bonus. Can you specify which browser you're using and the entries you're looking at?--Urszag (talk) 21:31, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

On my PC I can horizontally scroll when the screen is narrow to see all of the conjugation table at [[deutsch]]. Could be specific to mobile devices. DCDuring (talk) 22:47, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Urszag, @DCDuring They are not scrollable at jechać. — Fenakhay ^{(حيطي · مساهماتي)} 23:23, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Got it. That one is nonscrollable for me. I don't see any recent changes to Template:pl-conj-ai, but perhaps there was a change somewhere else that affected it.--Urszag (talk) 23:40, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@FPanon I've fixed the problem. — Fenakhay ^{(حيطي · مساهماتي)} 04:06, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

FYI, I just tried looking up dostęp (Polish) and the declension table does not scroll. FPanon (talk) 18:26, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

I am using the Brave browser, 1.76.75 on Android 13, Samsung OneUI 5.1. I also looked up nah (German) and its declension table scrollable. FPanon (talk) 18:29, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

• is scrollable*

FPanon (talk) 18:31, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

There is no scrollable content in dostęp. — Fenakhay ^{(حيطي · مساهماتي)} 18:52, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Could you share screenshots of what you are seeing? — Fenakhay ^{(حيطي · مساهماتي)} 18:53, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

How do I do that? (I am very new at this) By using the link symbol above the comment/reply box to a site such as Dropbox? FPanon (talk) 18:59, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Here goes...

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/pl27fl1joco78tq3vftez/Screenshot_20250320_115947_Brave.jpg?rlkey=tlacy1xav89wus3wxn25jzy79&st=ann1v5lj&dl=0 FPanon (talk) 19:06, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

I just tried looking up powierzchnia, also a noun. The declension table for that does scroll.

So perhaps dostępność is only used in the singular, and there is no plural form for it? Seems a bit strange even if it is only used rarely.

If so, sorry about the mix-up on my part. I am learning Polish. FPanon (talk) 19:17, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

It is an uncountable noun. Vininn126 (talk) 20:17, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-12

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

Weekly highlight

• Twice a year, around the equinoxes, the Wikimedia Foundation's Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team performs a datacenter server switchover, redirecting all traffic from one primary server to its backup. This provides reliability in case of a crisis, as we can always fall back on the other datacenter. Thanks to the Listen to Wikipedia tool, you can hear the switchover take place: Before it begins, you'll hear the steady stream of edits; Then, as the system enters a brief read-only phase, the sound stops for a couple of minutes, before resuming after the switchover. You can read more about the background and details of this process on the Diff blog. If you want to keep an ear out for the next server switchover, listen to the wikis on March 19 at 14:00 UTC.

Updates for editors

• The improved Content Translation tool dashboard is now available in 10 Wikipedias and will be available for all Wikipedias soon. With the unified dashboard, desktop users can now: Translate new sections of an article; Discover and access topic-based article suggestion filters (initially available only for mobile device users); Discover and access the Community-defined lists filter, also known as "Collections", from wiki-projects and campaigns.
• On Wikimedia Commons, a new system to select the appropriate file categories has been introduced: if a category has one or more subcategories, users will be able to click on an arrow that will open the subcategories directly within the form, and choose the correct one. The parent category name will always be shown on top, and it will always be possible to come back to it. This should decrease the amount of work for volunteers in fixing/creating new categories. The change is also available on mobile. These changes are part of planned improvements to the UploadWizard.
• The Community Tech team is seeking wikis to join a pilot for the Multiblocks feature and a refreshed Special:Block page in late March. Multiblocks enables administrators to impose multiple different types of blocks on the same user at the same time. If you are an admin or steward and would like us to discuss joining the pilot with your community, please leave a message on the project talk page.
• Starting March 25, the Editing team will test a new feature for Edit Check at 12 Wikipedias: Multi-Check. Half of the newcomers on these wikis will see all Reference Checks during their edit session, while the other half will continue seeing only one. The goal of this test is to see if users are confused or discouraged when shown multiple Reference Checks (when relevant) within a single editing session. At these wikis, the tags used on edits that show References Check will be simplified, as multiple tags could be shown within a single edit. Changes to the tags are documented on Phabricator. [14]
• The Global reminder bot, which is a service for notifying users that their temporary user-rights are about to expire, now supports using the localized name of the user-rights group in the message heading. Translators can see the listing of existing translations and documentation to check if their language needs updating or creation.
• The GlobalPreferences gender setting, which is used for how the software should refer to you in interface messages, now works as expected by overriding the local defaults. [15]
• View all 26 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the Wikipedia App for Android had a bug fixed for when a user is browsing and searching in multiple languages. [16]

Updates for technical contributors

• Later this week, the way that Codex styles are loaded will be changing. There is a small risk that this may result in unstyled interface message boxes on certain pages. User generated content (e.g. templates) is not impacted. Gadgets may be impacted. If you see any issues please report them. See the linked task for details, screenshots, and documentation on how to fix any affected gadgets.
• 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 23:48, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Outlined Letters and Digits

I was wondering if it would be possible for the outlined letters and digits in the Symbols for Legacy Computing Supplement within the character range U+1CCD6 to U+1CCF9 to redirect to their ASCII versions as character variants? I'm afraid that something might go wrong if I were to try to do it myself as Chrome is not rendering them correctly, even though I have fonts that have them installed. -GeniusWorkbench4622 21:16, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

@GeniusWorkbench4622:  Done. J3133 (talk) 07:08, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Idea: using embeddings to find redundant sense definitions

Hey everyone,

I’ve been thinking about a possible tool that could help clean up redundant or overlapping sense definitions across a whole language in Wiktionary. Sometimes entries have multiple senses that are really close in meaning and could probably be merged or simplified, but spotting those by hand can take a lot of time.

The idea:

- For each word, take all its definitions and convert them into vectors using a large language model (or another embeddings model).

- Compare those vectors to find definitions that are very close in meaning.

- This could generate a large ranked list — potentially covering an entire language’s entries — showing which words are most likely to have overlapping or redundant senses, sorted by how likely they are to need review.

This could help prioritize cleanup efforts in a really efficient way, starting with the worst offenders and working down through the more subtle cases.

Does this sound like something that would be useful for editors? I could build a tool or generate reports if there’s interest. Just wanted to get a sense of whether this kind of thing would be welcome and whether you think it would work well with how the community does cleanup.

Would love your thoughts! Danielshawellis (talk) 05:28, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Request for Review – Jacques Marin Biography Blocked by Abuse Filter

I recently attempted to create a Wikipedia article on Jacques Marin, a deceased French Catholic priest, but my edit was blocked due to an automated filter (“bio” rule). I believe the article is constructive, well-sourced, and contributes to public knowledge on an important historical topic.

The purpose of this article is to document Marin’s role as a spiritual director of Catholic communities such as Le Verbe de Vie and Communauté des Béatitudes, as well as his involvement in the history of sexual abuse cases within the Church. Several reliable sources, including La Croix, Cath.ch, Après la Ciase, and Témoignage Chrétien, report on the allegations of abuse against him and the actions taken by church authorities, including the revocation of his priestly faculties.

This article aligns with Wikipedia’s commitment to historical accuracy and neutral documentation of religious institutions’ responses to abuse cases. I have taken care to write it in a factual, neutral tone, ensuring that all statements about misconduct are sourced from reputable secondary sources rather than personal opinions or unverified claims. Could an administrator please review the draft and advise on how to proceed? If certain adjustments are needed to comply with Wikipedia’s policies, I am happy to make revisions. SaintlySquire (talk) 12:56, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

@SaintlySquire: this isn't Wikipedia, it's the Wiktionary which is an online dictionary. Thus, this is not the correct website for a biography of a person. See the webpage "w:Help:Your first article" for information about how to create a Wikipedia article. — Sgconlaw (talk) 13:57, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

@Sgconlaw: I am not 100% sure, but it would seem that you are talking to an LLM. Ioaxxere (talk) 14:22, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

@Ioaxxere: oh really? What makes you think that? — Sgconlaw (talk) 14:26, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

For context, they created an entry for a Dutch word with all the definitions in Dutch and using Dutch Wiktionary formatting. It was a word that has an entry at Dutch Wiktionary, but they didn't copy the content from there. Wikipedia already has an article for Jacques Marin, but it's about the actor, not a priest. Whether they're AI or not, they seem pretty clueless. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:05, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm pretty sure I started on the right site, but the link to the Grease Pit the error message gave me, sent me here. I'll try again. SaintlySquire (talk) 17:07, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

@SaintlySquire: The entry you tried to create and the abuse filter that stopped you were both here on English Wiktionary, not Wikipedia. The entry you did create had to be deleted because all the templates and headers were wrong (they might have been okay on Dutch Wiktionary) and all the content was in Dutch instead of English. You then tried to change the {{d}} added by someone else to an {{rfd}}, but you left out the language code- so it ended up with a module error. You're obviously not paying attention at all. Whether that's because you're an AI construct or because you're just clueless, you're doing things completely wrong. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:53, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Undo & redo options for comments in discussion sections of the entries

I propose adding both undo and redo options (↻↺) for comments of the discussion sections of the entries, just like the editing of entries themselves afford. JMGN (talk) 16:14, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

BTW, is this the right place to ask this? JMGN (talk) 22:59, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

It is appropriate to ask for any technical assistance and features here. This community is not able to implement every possible option that this wiki could have based on the current MediaWiki software, so if something needs to be escalated, it can be posted to phabricator: after the community here has expressed consensus that it should be implemented. Forgive me for being so dense, but can you explain more of what you have in mind here? Are you looking for buttons that just do Ctrl+Z (undo) and Ctrl+Y (re-do)? If so, that seems doable, but from my perspective, it is more cumbersome than just the keyboard inputs. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:06, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

@koavf: How exactly to do you redo here with your keyboard? JMGN (talk) 10:04, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Ctrl+Z —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:01, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Redo would be Ctrl+Y. If on a Mac, use the Command key (⌘+Z and ⌘+Y). This, that and the other (talk) 21:50, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Ah, yes, of course. As I also previously wrote above: "Are you looking for buttons that just do Ctrl+Z (undo) and Ctrl+Y (re-do)?". Thanks for correcting my typo. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:31, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Orphaning {{ne-usex}}

I successfully orphaned {{ne-l}} with one or two uses of |tr=, but there are 12 remaining cases of {{ne-usex}} whose transliterations don't match the automated output of {{usex}} (in words marked by <x>). Is there an elegant way to change the transliteration of a single word in an example sentence without entering the whole sequence manually? Ultimateria (talk) 01:53, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps |subst= in {{ux}}? — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 19:49, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, that looks like exactly what I need. Unfortunately, I'm out of my depth trying to respell the terms. Maybe @AryamanA can help? Ultimateria (talk) 22:16, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

@Ultimateria:  Done. You can delete the template. — Fenakhay ^{(حيطي · مساهماتي)} 02:30, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

more weirdness on Sino-Tibetan Reconstruction pages

Our Sino-Tibetan pages are being weird again: on pages like Reconstruction:Proto-Sino-Tibetan/l-(t/d)jam and Reconstruction:Proto-Sino-Tibetan/m/s/g-ljak, the {{head}} templates are only displaying *d)jam and *g-ljak respectively. I could just set head=*m/s/g-ljak, but I don't know if it's preferable to do that (and require someone to notice and do that any time someone makes a new page with a slash in it) or to change the code so {{head}}recognizes what not to truncate. (Compare the issue we had with how they displayed in categories.) - -sche (discuss) 07:50, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

@Benwing2 was convinced this was a recently introduced MediaWiki bug (regression), but I'm not so sure. The incorrect appearance arose between June 2022 and March 2023 - impossible to pin down more precisely due to a lack of relevant Wayback Machine captures between those dates. Since the relevant Scribunto module wasn't relevantly edited during those dates [17] [18], the conclusion is that our Lua modules are somehow to blame. This, that and the other (talk) 11:35, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

How would people feel about switching to another "orthography", e.g. Reconstruction:Proto-Sino-Tibetan/l-(t\d)jam using \ instead of /? Would that help us avoid all the issues that / keeps resulting in?
Otherwise, maybe have the headword templates, when they detect they're on RC: pages (since this issue does not seem to affect mainspace pages like she/he), access the full pagename ({{PAGENAME}} seems to be able to do so, returning "Grease pit/2025/March" on this page) and then delete only the part before the first slash...? - -sche (discuss) 18:57, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

• My preferred solution is to simply move every single affected page to a non-slash title, or simply delete the entry if the entire lemma is suspect. The two words cited earlier in the discussion embody these two different situations:
  • *l-(t/d)jam, the entry should be deleted entirely since it's effectively claiming, to use a Proto-Indo-European analogy, that a word corresponding to *pleh₁- (“to fill”) and another word corresponding to *pleth₂- (“flat”) are the same when they obviously are not.
  • I'll just move *m/s/g-ljak (“to lick”) to *mə-l(j)ək. Other pre-initial consonants can be explained as other prefixes, and the schwa must be reconstructed to account for the Chinese form.

— Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 20:33, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable to me, if other people who edit Sino-Tibetan are OK with it. FWIW there are at least two non-Sino-Tibetan reconstructions which also have slashes, Reconstruction:Proto-Great Andamanese/burə/in and Reconstruction:Proto-Tai/kuŋᴮ/ꟲ; these currently solve the headword display issue by using head= but I wonder if the Andamese one, at least, could be solved via the "move it to one reconstruction/spelling and mention other possible reconstructions/spellings in the entry, instead of slashing both in the title" approach. - -sche (discuss) 21:23, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

(And there are more Sino-Tibetan pages that use slashes than the two named above, e.g. m-duŋ/k ~ m-tuŋ/k, b/pa ~ b/po which I am amused didn't get entered as b/pa/o, but I see you're getting to them (thanks!). Should we simplify the titles that have tildes btw, i.e. rename b/pa ~ b/po to just ba (or bo, pa, whatever) and then mention all the other possible reconstructions like po within the entry? Or nah?) - -sche (discuss) 08:31, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Family trees

Something weird is going on with the automatically generated family trees on language category pages. For example, the family tree at CAT:Proto-Italic language shows Romance as a daughter of Latin, with all the Romance languages descending from Romance. But if you go to CAT:Latin language and look at the family tree there, Romance is missing (along with all the Romance languages). Likewise, the family tree at CAT:Sanskrit language shows Dardic as a daughter of Ashokan Prakrit, with all the Dardic languages descending from Dardic. But if you go to CAT:Ashokan Prakrit language and look at the family tree there, Dardic and all its daughter languages are missing. Anyone know what's going on and how to fix it? —Mahāgaja · talk 09:18, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

@Mahagaja: @Theknightwho and I have been wrestling with these trees. The problem is there are two separate tree relationships in the data (containment and ancestry), and the family trees are unable to show the difference. Theknightwho has been cleaning up the ancestry relationships and it's possible this is exposing some latent bugs in the family tree code. TKW can you comment? Benwing2 (talk) 04:29, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Boldfaced translation in Template:ux:

At -더라고 (-deorago) the English translation is unexpectedly boldfaced. I don't know why. Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:41, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi; this is an issue with Korean transliteration - the module is currently removing one of the bold tags, which is causing all of the text after the transliteration to be bolded. @Lunabunn says they're planning on rolling out a new Korean translit module which will not have this issue. - saph ^_^^⠀talk⠀ 17:58, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, @Saph and @Lunabunn. Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:24, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-13

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

Weekly highlight

• The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking your feedback on the drafts of the objectives and key results that will shape the Foundation's Product and Technology priorities for the next fiscal year (starting in July). The objectives are broad high-level areas, and the key-results are measurable ways to track the success of their objectives. Please share your feedback on the talkpage, in any language, ideally before the end of April.

Updates for editors

• The CampaignEvents extension will be released to multiple wikis (see deployment plan for details) in April 2025, and the team has begun the process of engaging communities on the identified wikis. The extension provides tools to organize, manage, and promote collaborative activities (like events, edit-a-thons, and WikiProjects) on the wikis. The extension has three tools: Event Registration, Collaboration List, and Invitation Lists. It is currently on 13 Wikipedias, including English Wikipedia, French Wikipedia, and Spanish Wikipedia, as well as Wikidata. Questions or requests can be directed to the extension talk page or in Phabricator (with #campaigns-product-team tag).
• Starting the week of March 31st, wikis will be able to set which user groups can view private registrants in Event Registration, as part of the CampaignEvents extension. By default, event organizers and the local wiki admins will be able to see private registrants. This is a change from the current behavior, in which only event organizers can see private registrants. Wikis can change the default setup by requesting a configuration change in Phabricator (and adding the #campaigns-product-team tag). Participants of past events can cancel their registration at any time.
• Administrators at wikis that have a customized MediaWiki:Sidebar should check that it contains an entry for the Special pages listing. If it does not, they should add it using * specialpages-url|specialpages. Wikis with a default sidebar will see the link moved from the page toolbox into the sidebar menu in April. [19]
• The Minerva skin (mobile web) combines both Notice and Alert notifications within the bell icon (). There was a long-standing bug where an indication for new notifications was only shown if you had unseen Alerts. This bug is now fixed. In the future, Minerva users will notice a counter atop the bell icon when you have 1 or more unseen Notices and/or Alerts. [20]
• View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• VisualEditor has introduced a new client-side hook for developers to use when integrating with the VisualEditor target lifecycle. This hook should replace the existing lifecycle-related hooks, and be more consistent between different platforms. In addition, the new hook will apply to uses of VisualEditor outside of just full article editing, allowing gadgets to interact with the editor in DiscussionTools as well. The Editing Team intends to deprecate and eventually remove the old lifecycle hooks, so any use cases that this new hook does not cover would be of interest to them and can be shared in the task.
• Developers who use the mw.Api JavaScript library, can now identify the tool using it with the userAgent parameter: var api = new mw.Api( { userAgent: 'GadgetNameHere/1.0.1' } );. If you maintain a gadget or user script, please set a user agent, because it helps with library and server maintenance and with differentiating between legitimate and illegitimate traffic. [21][22]
• 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 22:42, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

Esperanto language-specific data module

I came across Category:Esperanto X-system forms and saw that it was not defined in Wiktionary's category tree, so I created Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data/lang-specific/eo in an attempt to resolve this. Could someone check it over, and if it's correct, add the line ["eo"] = true, to the langs_with_modules list on the protected page Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data/lang-specific? jlwoodwa (talk) 05:44, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Looks fine. I've gone ahead and added eo. - saph ^_^^⠀talk⠀ 15:36, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Why does not giving a value to the parameter 'top' give an error in my template Template:tr-table

It says

Lua error in Module:utilities/templates at line 19: Parameters 1 and 2 are required.

If I don't give top a value. The top paramater shows up only in this line, I want it to be optional and default to 3

{{top{{{top|3}}}}} 

Zbutie3.14 (talk) 20:48, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

The template works fine for me without |top=. Could you link to an example of this? - saph ^_^^⠀talk⠀ 01:10, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

It happens when I leave |top= in the code but don't give it a value, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Template_talk:tr-table#test

but it doesn't do this when I leave any other parameter blank Zbutie3.14 (talk) 16:05, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Adding it but leaving it blank means you're calling {{top}}, which is not the template you want (and which does require params 1 and 2). Just leave out |top=. - saph ^_^^⠀talk⠀ 16:11, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Oh I get whats happening now, probably shouldn't have made the param have the same name as the template Zbutie3.14 (talk) 20:26, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

No, that's not the issue: since you set it up so that |top= determines the width (2 > {{top2}}, 3 > {{top3}}), if that width is empty, it outputs {{top}}. You don't need to rename the parameter. - saph ^_^^⠀talk⠀ 23:15, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Since when is it illegal to have links in headings outside principle namespace?

Is there a policy against having links in headings outside principal namespace, eg, for Citations pages? When and how was it made policy? If it is not valid policy, we have a faulty filter.

I always thought that links in headings (outside of principal namespace) were a good thing as they economized on keystrokes. DCDuring (talk) 00:00, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Hundreds of Citations pages have links in headings; I've removed that namespace from the filter. The namespaces in which links in headers are now disallowed are the main, Thesaurus and Reconstruction namespaces. This, that and the other (talk) 00:09, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm glad it wasn't a matter of policy, just from a recent (AFAICT) filter change. DCDuring (talk) 12:48, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Do we have a filter for templates in headers? Those are more problematic than bare links in headers, and extremely common in the Wiktionary: namespace. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:52, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Thesaurus pages use {{ws sense}} inside headers. That will have to be changed if we disallow templates in header, or Thesaurus: should be excluded. - saph ^_^^⠀talk⠀ 14:29, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Support: templates in headers make it very difficult to compose links to the relevant sextion. Obviously Thesaurus would be excluded. (While on the topic, one could also ask why we don't template our L2 language headers in main namespace like Wiktionnaire does, but perhaps I shouldn't go there...) This, that and the other (talk) 20:59, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

I seem to vaguely remember from Wikipedia that templates in headers also create accessibility problems because screen readers can't handle them. But I read that many years ago, and maybe screen readers have evolved since then. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:18, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Template:suffixsee doesn't show all items

At -o {{suffixsee}} when expanded as allowed shows "... and 54 more", but does not allow the display of additional items. (One would have to navigate to the category to see them) I suppose this behavior could depend on which skin one uses (I use Monobook), but I would hope we test against all five skins. DCDuring (talk) 15:36, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

I get the same behavior in Vector 2022 as you do in Monobook. —Mahāgaja · talk 15:44, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

This is an unavoidable MediaWiki limitation: expandable CategoryTrees only show the first 200 (?) items. You may not have been so obviously aware of this prior to a few months ago, as that's when I added the "and 54 more" text using pure CSS. To make it into a clickable link would require the use of JavaScript. This, that and the other (talk) 23:11, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Maybe we should deprecate {{suffixsee}} in favor of a simple link to the category. We should do this now for all cases where the (helpful) "and N more" text appears. DCDuring (talk) 14:16, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

We don't need to deprecate {{suffixsee}}, we could just return it to its previous behavior of providing a link to the category without a preview of its contents. —Mahāgaja · talk 15:40, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Or maybe keep it as it is, but add something like "see Category:[Language name] terms suffixed with [suffix] for the complete list". Chuck Entz (talk) 16:09, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

But what is the added value of the template generated listing of the category vs. the category listing itself? DCDuring (talk) 17:14, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Not having to leave the page you're on to see the entries (which for many categories will be all the entries, and for categories with 200+ entries, will usually be an informative sample). It's a relatively small benefit, but is there any downside? I find myself agreeing with Chuck: let's just stick a link to the category onto the end of the "...and X more" text. I could imagine some edge case where the first 200 terms using some unusually common suffix all manage to be unrepresentative of normal words (like how the first several hundred terms in CAT:English nouns are all numbers), but exceptional edge cases can/should be handled exceptionally, I think. - -sche (discuss) 23:04, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Module not showing up

I made the module Module:labels/data/lang/rsk to differentiate between a few select words used in Pannonian Rusyn as spoken in Serbia versus as spoken in Croatia. I have one of the labels active on the општина (opština) entry, but I refreshed it and the "Serbian Pannonian Rusyn" category hasn't appeared. Similarly, when I try to create the category using "lect=1|Serbia" after auto cat, it doesn't show the label stuff as it does with "Category: Serbian Serbo-Croatian". Does it just take time to take effect, or is there some underlying programming that I've missed? Thanks. Insaneguy1083 (talk) 17:13, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

@Insaneguy1083: You have to add it to Module:labels/data/lang, which I have now done. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:40, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Is there a way for accelerated entry creation to take POS into account when adding pronunciation templates?

I noticed recently that accelerated entry creation consistently produces pronunciation sections with stress on the wrong syllable for inflected forms of many Old English prefixed verbs, e.g. ābrēoþaþ, a form of ābrēoþan. I notified the editor of the affected entries, but for now, the only solution I know of is to manually edit the pronunciation section for each form, which is not the most convenient or reliable solution. So I was thinking about alternatives.

If Module:ang-pron could be edited to make it be able to tell perfectly just from the shape of a word whether it is a verb form or not, that would solve things, but I suspect that isn't possible, due to at least some endings being shared between nouns and verbs. If so, Category:Old English non-lemma forms is going to need some large-scale cleanup to fix the position of the stress in many existing entries. (However, some improvements to the module may be possible. I appreciate the advantages to having these kinds of unified pronunciation modules that work from spelling to pronunciation, but I do think it's an unfortunate disadvantage that they make it so easy for slightly inaccurate pronunciations, such as ones with stress on the wrong syllable or the wrong vowel length, to be generated with no warning to anybody. And even in cases where an editor notices that the default generated pronunciation is wrong, it's often not intuitive how to fix the issue: Template:ang-IPA relies on editors knowing and remembering how to correctly apply "-", ">", "<", "+" among other symbols.)

I wanted to know if it is technically possible to adjust this entry creation process (I assume by adding rules to Module:accel/ang) so that it can 1) notice that the entry is for a verb form, then 2) detect the presence of a prefix in the verb, and 3) automatically insert "<" into the ang-IPA template after the prefix so that the prefix is correctly marked as unstressed. Otherwise, it might just be better to not generate pronunciation sections when generating accelerated inflected forms for Old English (I think having a pronunciation section here is rarely particularly useful compared to just having them at entries for the lemma form, and not having them is certainly better than having incorrect pronunciations.) Urszag (talk) 06:11, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

I think I was able to get this particular issue fixed by making Module:accel/ang pass over a pos parameter to Template:ang-IPA when the lemma is a verb. The results can be seen at ādēafian. Cleanup of old forms will still be needed; I imagine it should be pretty simple to have a bot add pos=verb to the pronunciation section of all entries in Category:Old English verb forms.--Urszag (talk) 23:54, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

How to add a language code parameter into a template

I wanted to add a parameter something similar to 2nd parameter of template "borrowed". How do I do that? MurjhayaAanch (talk) 12:24, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Why is this not working?

{{#if:{{{trk-ogr-pro|}}{{{trk-ogr-pro-d|}}}|*}}{{#if:{{{trk-bul-pro|}}{{{trk-bul-pro-d|}}}|*}}{{#if:{{{xbo-vol|}}{{{xbo-vol-d|}}}|*}}{{#if:{{{cv-old|}}{{{cv-old-d|}}}|*}}{{#if:{{{cv-mid|}}{{{cv-mid-d|}}}|*}}{{#if:{{{cv|}}{{{cv-d|}}}|*}}{{#if:{{{cv-vir|}}{{{cv-vir-d|}}}|*}} {{desc|cv-vir|{{{cv-vir|}}}}} <!--- Viryal ---> 

Broken up for better visibility:

{{#if:{{{trk-ogr-pro|}}{{{trk-ogr-pro-d|}}}|*}}
{{#if:{{{trk-bul-pro|}}{{{trk-bul-pro-d|}}}|*}}
...
{{#if:{{{cv|}}{{{cv-d|}}}|*}}
{{desc|cv-vir|{{{cv-vir|}}}

What I want is everything before the {desc} to output 1 star if the parameter exists, so that {desc} has the correct level, but the {desc} ends up only having 1 star. However if I add span around the star,

{{#if:{{{trk-ogr-pro|}}{{{trk-ogr-pro-d|}}}|<span>*</span>}}{{#if:{{{trk-bul-pro|}}{{{trk-bul-pro-d|}}}|<span>*</span>}}{{#if:{{{xbo-vol|}}{{{xbo-vol-d|}}}|<span>*</span>}}{{#if:{{{cv-old|}}{{{cv-old-d|}}}|<span>*</span>}}{{#if:{{{cv-mid|}}{{{cv-mid-d|}}}|<span>*</span>}}{{#if:{{{cv|}}{{{cv-d|}}}|<span>*</span>}}{{#if:{{{cv-vir|}}{{{cv-vir-d|}}}|<span>*</span>}} {{desc|cv-vir|{{{cv-vir|}}}}}

It has the correct number of stars but they are interpreted as literal text rather than adding to the level of the desc Zbutie3.14 (talk) 20:21, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-14

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 Editing team is working on a new Edit check: Peacock check. This check's goal is to identify non-neutral terms while a user is editing a wikipage, so that they can be informed that their edit should perhaps be changed before they publish it. This project is at the early stages, and the team is looking for communities' input: in this Phabricator task, they are gathering on-wiki policies, templates used to tag non-neutral articles, and the terms (jargon and keywords) used in edit summaries for the languages they are currently researching. You can participate by editing the table on Phabricator, commenting on the task, or directly messaging Trizek (WMF).
• Single User Login has now been updated on all wikis to move login and account creation to a central domain. This makes user login compatible with browser restrictions on cross-domain cookies, which have prevented users of some browsers from staying logged in.
• View all 35 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• Starting on March 31st, the MediaWiki Interfaces team will begin a limited release of generated OpenAPI specs and a SwaggerUI-based sandbox experience for MediaWiki REST APIs. They invite developers from a limited group of non-English Wikipedia communities (Arabic, German, French, Hebrew, Interlingua, Dutch, Chinese) to review the documentation and experiment with the sandbox in their preferred language. In addition to these specific Wikipedia projects, the sandbox and OpenAPI spec will be available on the on the test wiki REST Sandbox special page for developers with English as their preferred language. During the preview period, the MediaWiki Interfaces Team also invites developers to share feedback about your experience. The preview will last for approximately 2 weeks, after which the sandbox and OpenAPI specs will be made available across all wiki projects.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• Sometimes a small, one line code change can have great significance: in this case, it means that for the first time in years we're able to run all of the stack serving maps.wikimedia.org - a host dedicated to serving our wikis and their multi-lingual maps needs - from a single core datacenter, something we test every time we perform a datacenter switchover. This is important because it means that in case one of our datacenters is affected by a catastrophe, we'll still be able to serve the site. This change is the result of extensive work by two developers on porting the last component of the maps stack over to kubernetes, where we can allocate resources more efficiently than before, thus we're able to withstand more traffic in a single datacenter. This work involved a lot of complicated steps because this software, and the software libraries it uses, required many long overdue upgrades. This type of work makes the Wikimedia infrastructure more sustainable.

Meetings and events

• MediaWiki Users and Developers Workshop Spring 2025 is happening in Sandusky, USA, and online, from 14–16 May 2025. The workshop will feature discussions around the usage of MediaWiki software by and within companies in different industries and will inspire and onboard new users. Registration and presentation signup is now available at the workshop's website.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:05, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

April 2025

Unknown error

I tried to create sorbigi with this content, but I get the following error: Error, edit not published.[8cd80cf7-ebde-4a02-8f73-1019c5ba6a6a] Caught exception of type MediaWiki\Extension\AbuseFilter\Filter\FilterNotFoundException What does that mean?

Thank you, 91.94.110.129 20:15, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

I think it means there was some kind of temporary glitch, probably in the inner workings of some abuse filter. Whatever it was, there's no trace of it in any of the logs.

In general, you'll have better luck with abuse filters if you create the entry first, then add the quotes. There are abuse filters that look for new accounts or IPs adding hard-coded external links, and the more content you have in the same edit, the higher the chance that something will look like the other things the filter is checking for. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:46, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Just FYI, there has been an increase in temporary outages lately in MediaWiki servers. Apparently this is due to bots relentlessly scraping the servers for machine learning training content. Traffic has gone up at least 50% since a year ago, mentioned here: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/04/ai-bots-strain-wikimedia-as-bandwidth-surges-50/. FWIW at Amazon there is a whole team dedicated to detecting and filtering out robotic traffic for multiple reasons; e.g. it strains the infrastructure and it distorts things like recommender models that are supposed to be trained on human preferences (which have a very different profile from robotic traffic). Google certainly has the same thing (I've run into it periodically, e.g. if I have a bunch of tabs open and have to reboot, and Chrome hits all the tabs at once when it reloads). es Seems like MediaWiki need to do this too; these bots are straining their infrastructure too, and distorting things like cache prediction systems that try to figure out which pages are visited most so they can be cached in the CDN's. Benwing2 (talk) 20:22, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Bulleted list in image caption and #invoke

Today I was trying to wikify 変体仮名 by replacing the HTML tags with {{unordered list}}. (Just using the "*" syntax for an unordered list does not work in an image caption.) That template has been deleted by User:Benwing, so I tried using the Module:List directly, as the template did. But then I got an error message that said "invoke" cannot be used in article space directly, and it had to be wrapped in a template. But it did not say which template to use. The module page seems to indicate that {{unordered list}} and friends were expected to be used. If there is a discussion about deleting this template, I can't find one. Does anyone know what I'm supposed to do in this situation? Is there another template? Are image captions not supposed to have lists? {{ordered list}} still exists. Also curious why #invoke can't be used directly, as it seems to work fine in previews. -- Beland (talk) 23:58, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

@Beland: First of all, you should never use "invoke" in entries. There is an abuse filter that looks for that and stops it. It doesn't give suggestions tailored to the context because it operates on every page in the Main namespace and doesn't know the context. As for what to do: {{col}} and similar templates generate bulleted lists inside of image captions.

The first thing to be aware of is that they take a language code as the first parameter and each of the unnamed parameters is a separate item in the list. Another thing is that {{col}} doesn't like {{m}} in its parameters. Also, like Wikimedia templates in general, it treats "=" as the boundary between the name of a parameter and the value assigned to it. That means you have to replace it with =, {{=}}, <nowiki>=</nowiki>, or equivalent.

It will probably take some tinkering with inline prefixes and other tricks to make the display come out the same. You'll have to read through the documentation at {{col}} to see what's available.

Good luck! Chuck Entz (talk) 02:26, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer! I'll try {{col}} and update the documentation on other templates. Do you happen to know why #invoke is forbidden or in what discussion that was decided? Beland (talk) 20:31, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

It's just considered bad practice to show raw template syntax and details about modules in entry wikitext. Maybe @Theknightwho. who created the abuse filter in question, can explain better. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:38, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz @Beland Longstanding practice. We do everything via templates for the sake of keeping things intuitive for the average editor, whereas {{#invoke:}} is treated as a building-block to create templates out of, and not something that the average editor needs to worry about. It's the same for things like {{#IF:}} and so on. Theknightwho (talk) 22:06, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Link breaking help

Template:RQ:Jewish Oral Law is dor quoting and uses switches between many values. I tried to make a version that sticks to some of the parameters and includes an external link by default: User:Danny lost/sandbox/Template:Oral Sefaria. It looks mostly fine, but breaks on the second case of the documentation, which uses another template Template:RQ:Mishnah to pass parameters to the main one. The break happens about the inclusion of |5=,as if a space is present but I can't find it. What's the problem?. cc: @Hftf (talk • contribs). Danny lost (talk) 06:04, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

 Done Danny lost (talk) 12:40, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Petition to add potential form -öx and participle form -öl to the Volapük verb conjugation template

Like the title says, I should very much like these forms, specially the participle forms, be added to the template. The template is already extremely good and comprehensive, including arcane, obscure and seldom used forms like the second form -or conjugations or the jussive mood.; methinks it'd only add in beneficial ways to include the potential mood that Schleyer outlined in his works to be tied to the -öx ending, let alone the participial forms, which are notoriously unseen. 181.87.149.108 03:08, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Issues with preview on mobile

When using visual editor on mobile, @Saph, @Ardahan Karabağ and I have been experiencing a bug where multiple elements overlap, making the previewed edit illegible. example 1 example 2

Saph and I have tried to recreate this bug on other wiki's, but have been unable to, leading us to believe this may be an issue on Wiktionary's end, rather than an issue with Wikimedia. Does anyone have any idea as to what could be causing such a bug? — BABR・talk 17:55, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, I also have tried on laptop but it was quite alright. And don't think that the bug is caused by the phone itself though. I wonder if there are other mobile users who has this problem. Ardahan Karabağ (talk) 18:49, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

If I try either on en.m.wiktionary.org from my desktop or from my iPhone, I can't even preview an edit because the bar at the bottom is all out of whack. Presumably something changed recently in some CSS or JavaScript to cause this, but I don't know what. Benwing2 (talk) 19:32, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

I can't replicate the issue on the mobile site, whether I use a computer or my phone. Has it gone away? This, that and the other (talk) 04:38, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

@This, that and the other I'm pretty sure it was due to a change made by @Ioaxxere to MediaWiki:Minerva.css on April 6 around 12:50AM UTC. We reverted the change and that seems to have fixed it. Benwing2 (talk) 04:46, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-15

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

• From now on, interface admins and centralnotice admins are technically required to enable two-factor authentication before they can use their privileges. In the future this might be expanded to more groups with advanced user-rights. [23]
• View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• The Design System Team is preparing to release the next major version of Codex (v2.0.0) on April 29. Editors and developers who use CSS from Codex should see the 2.0 overview documentation, which includes guidance related to a few of the breaking changes such as font-size, line-height, and size-icon.
• The results of the Developer Satisfaction Survey (2025)  are now available. Thank you to all participants. These results help the Foundation decide what to work on next and to review what they recently worked on.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

• The 2025 Wikimedia Hackathon will take place in Istanbul, Turkey, between 2–4 May. Registration for attending the in-person event will close on 13 April. Before registering, please note the potential need for a visa or e-visa to enter the country.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 18:52, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

The latest Aragonese dictionary

For whomever it may concern, a new edition of the Academy's downloadable dictionary has been published:
http://www.academiadelaragones.org/biblio/EDACAR14DACC.pdf
...just in case someone might take a notion to construct a template for using it as a reference. The most immediately noticeable difference is that the typeface is smaller, and so the document takes up only about half as many pages as the previous version. — HelpMyUnbelief (talk) 20:17, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Entry page redirection bug

Hello. Go to https://www.wiktionary.org/. Fill in the form, for instance, with "a". Check whether from your side you're redirected to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A Pápiliunculus (talk) 07:29, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi, this is being tracked on Phabricator already: phab:T391297. It is out of our control so hopefully it'll be fixed soon enough. Saph (talk) 14:30, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

A broken link in the user menu thing

At the top right there is a menu marked by an ellipsis "..." and this menu contains an item "Pages for logged out editors - learn more". The link goes to Help:Introduction, which does not exist on Wiktionary. 2A00:23C5:FE1C:3701:F050:4AD7:86D3:BA99 16:23, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

I don't see any incoming links to it, but I redirected the page. Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:48, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

noun/verb 'form' vs 'forms'

I've noticed that in the header templates for nouns and verbs, sometimes "form" is used and sometimes "forms" is used. Examples: heterographs : {head|en|noun forms} baggages  : {head|en|noun form} bagged  : {head|en|verb form} ashened  : {head|en|verb forms}

Is there a different template behavior between "form" and "forms", or are they synonyms/equivalents? Is one preferred to the other?

Thanks! Killeroonie (talk) 21:04, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

@Killeroonie Very much synonyms! See Template:head#Part of speech. This, that and the other (talk) 21:50, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Under the header you referenced, it states "If the part of speech is written out in full, it is stylistically preferred to write it in the singular." So that's a preference there. I'm just dipping my toe into the templates here and am already drowning lol.

I'm confused by what this means, under Template:head#Parameters:

```

|2=

The part of speech category (such as "noun", "verb", "adjective" etc), which is used to add the entry to the appropriate category. This can be in either plural or singular form. In the latter case, the template will pluralise it automatically if it doesn't already end in -s. Exceptions can be added to the invariable list at the top of Module:headword/data if necessary.

```

It says if pos category like 'noun' is used in the singular, "the template will pluralize it automatically if it doesn't already end in -s."

So my new question is, what does "it" refer to in the above sentence? There are only 25 entries for cases where the head template pos is pluralized and 4,339 where it is singular:

head | en | nouns, 25 entries, e.g. say

head | en | noun, 4,339 entries, e.g. comics

So it would seem the "standard" is to use the singular, at least for English nouns. Both the Template:head#Part of speech and the fact that most entries use the singular 'noun' would seem to support this conclusion.

But why are there *any* singular "noun" head arguments when then Template says it will pluralize "it" (maybe the web page source html doesn't count as "it?"

However, the vast majority of Eng. nouns are using the en-noun template, I suspect, which I will be looking into next.

Killeroonie (talk) 02:25, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

I think it means the parameter is converted to plural for the sake of the category. E.g. "bagged" and "ashened" are both placed in Category:English_verb_forms.--Urszag (talk) 02:48, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Hmm... who do I talk to to make edits on Template:head#Parameters? I'd like to edit this section:

|2=

The part of speech category (such as "noun", "verb", "adjective" etc), which is used to add the entry to the appropriate category. This can be in either plural or singular form. In the latter case, the template will pluralise it automatically if it doesn't already end in -s. Exceptions can be added to the invariable list at the top of Module:headword/data if necessary.

to become:

|2=

The part of speech category (such as "noun", "verb", "adjective" etc), which is used to add the entry to the appropriate Wiktionary:Categories.

----

It's already stated in Template:head#Part of speech:

" If the part of speech is written out in full, it is stylistically preferred to write it in the singular."

And the text about pluralization is an implementation detail that happens behind the scenes that just adds confusion to this entry.

I'd also want to modify Template:head#Part of speech:

Where within two sentences of each other it states:

"Add the word "form" to indicate a non-lemma form. For example, use 'noun form' for plurals and inflections of nouns."

and also:

"For example, nf or nounf expands to 'noun forms', and compadjf expands to 'comparative adjective forms'"

I have confirmed that the head template will change an abbreviation like 'nf' to "noun forms" (plural), so I believe that is the intended style (plural), which contradicts the above section. (Where is the facepalm emoji??)

So I believe this section should be edited at the very least to indicate that "Add the word "forms" to indicate a non-lemma form. For example, use 'noun forms' for plurals and inflections of nouns." (forms plural) to be consistent with the Template.

Unless there is some other macro happening when a user enters "noun form" vs "noun forms" instead of "nf" that I don't know about. <shrug emoji>

THEN AGAIN...

there are only 25 entries with head|en|noun forms, e.g. say and over 309K entries with head|en|noun form, e.g. leaves, so on just this basis alone I'd submit that the standard should be "noun form" (singluar) for consistency.

Killeroonie (talk) 03:54, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

@Killeroonie The documentation is correct that noun form is stylistically preferred, but noun form and noun forms are equivalent. Under the hood, a singular part of speech is pluralized to get the appropriate category name, which is e.g. Category:English noun forms not Category:English noun form. The abbreviations like nounf and nf were added recently (by me) to reduce the amount of typing necessary; ultimately they map to noun forms just like noun form does. Maybe there's a better way of writing the documentation that wouldn't confuse you; if so let me know how you think it ought to be written. Benwing2 (talk) 20:10, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Cornish category tree additions

Hello, I am not fully familiar with the category tree system, however could I request that somebody adds the following to the Cornish category tree:

(under Cornish lemmas):

• Cornish mutation triggers:
  • Cornish soft mutation triggers
  • Cornish aspirate mutation triggers
  • Cornish hard mutation triggers
  • Cornish mixed mutation triggers

Let me know if not - I can revert my additions of these categories. Thanks :) Tesco250 (talk) 11:25, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

@Tesco250 What's a "mutation trigger" and what sort of entries go in these categories? I assume there are corresponding things in all the Celtic languages, so I'm confused why no one has seen fit to categorize them yet. Benwing2 (talk) 20:05, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Just any word that triggers a mutation of the following word - e.g. dhe in Cornish, an in Irish. Like I say I'm not familiar with the category tree, so if this isn't worth adding as categories then I can revert the changes. Equally, they might be better placed in a different part of the category tree. I just thought having categories for them might be helpful. Tesco250 (talk) 20:41, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

My initial reaction is that these seem like useful categories. Something that is worth clarifying: mutation sometimes applies in open-ended contexts, doesn't it? E.g. "after a feminine noun". I assume you wouldn't want to put all feminine nouns into a category just because of that kind of regular mutation.--Urszag (talk) 20:56, 11 April 2025 (UTC)