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Hardly the only supporter. FaviFake dangled a worm and quite a few editors took the hook, including yours truly. There is nothing wrong with dangling a worm. ―Mandruss☎ IMO. 10:11, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WaId, you have more patience with ridiculosity than I. My position is "Get over it." Last time I checked, we are the most adaptable species currently on the planet. The rest of the internet changes for most of us on a near-daily basis, and most of us absorb the change without missing a beat. Coddle people and they become weaker, but only in the environment where they are coddled. I oppose coddling. ―Mandruss☎ IMO. 10:14, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I know you're joking, but the ability to adjust this with a user script was seriously proposed. IMO the color of the box is so trivial that it's not worth fighting over. If folks want it to be purple, then let it be purple! Let them pick a new color each year, if they want. And if "I" want it to be brown, or green, or a more mauvy shade of pinky russet, then there's nothing wrong with me creating my own CSS code to do that (or, you know, asking one of y'all if you'd be willing to do that for me, because I don't know how). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:41, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Another discussion on this page is proposing that every message box be designed to support being skinned. While it's technically possible for every design element to be written in a way that various visual features can be overridden in a skin or a personal style file, I don't think the benefit/cost ratio is sufficiently high that it should be mandated and backported for everything. If someone wants to voluntarily support skinability in a specific widget, sure, as long as it doesn't make it too difficult to find someone to maintain it in future. (It's not that hard for people who understand CSS, but there are plenty of editors who react with a "I can't do it!" when hearing the word "template", much less "CSS".) isaacl (talk) 22:51, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would have argued this before LLM and autonomous agent coding tools became somewhat workable (with many caveats). Making a widget skinnable is one of the class of problems that automated coding agents can do competently and cheaply. I can flop a dark mode onto any existing thing with a single prompt using GPT-5. Yes, check it and make sure the LLM hasn't barfed up a hallucination, but while I would have argued themable UI was a nice-to-have prior to this generation of automation, at this point it is easy enough to do and low enough risk. Andre🚐23:12, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As Izno says, it's pretty easy to do; no LLM necessary. The layout just needs to follow some basic CSS principles. Like I said, my concern is about mandating this for all new widgets and requiring all existing widgets to be retrofitted, for the benefit of what I think will be a small number of editors, and complicating support costs for them since their UI will differ from everyone else's. isaacl (talk) 01:00, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I add TemplateStyles on occasion solely because I want to make it easier to skin things. In some other cases it's enough just to add a class to a template or other transcluded item. Izno (talk) 00:04, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm going to interpret that as an endorsement of a Village Pump header that dynamically pulsates through the entire rainbow. Support.[FBDB]Sdkbtalk16:30, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'll certainly try both of these, but I prefer this one for now. But it'll have to wait until my talk page somehow gets big enough to fully test. Thanks! guninvalid (talk) 08:37, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The article seems to contain too many templates, which makes it so that all subsections automatically open in mobile view, making it difficult to navigate. Is there a way to fix this? Nehme1499 (talk) 19:10, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The chief problem is the Head-to-head record section -- 118 rows, each with {{fb}}, {{expr}}, and usually two different {{sort}}s. It's over 400, or almost a third of the total number of templates/modules on the page.
I have removed some of the non-MOS-compliant flags. There are more that need to be removed. Be wary of removing flags next to teams and players; the football people don't like it when you do that. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:58, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
130 years is ambitious and IMO unnecessary, but I got pushback on it in 2015. This 2015 discussion resulted in addition of error checking, set at 150 years for reasons that I did not agree with at the time. As person infoboxen have been updated to do automatic age calculation, I boldly reduced the limit to 130 years, which still gives us plenty of headroom. I would be perfectly happy with a limit of 123 years, since no human has lived a verified span longer than 122 and a few months, and if someone does reach 123, it will be trivial to change the limit. Even then, unlikely ages will still need to be searched for and fixed manually by adding {{birth year}} or a similar template. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:05, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I want to convert the dial codes in Telephone numbers in Europe as well as using abbreviation or tooltips so when you hover over them with a mouse, the country is displayed. Does {{location map}} or a related template support abbreviations, i.e. the hover-over feature? 8rz (talk) 00:58, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You could do this with an image map. Although it would be a bit time consuming to put together. Here's a sample. I used this site to help generate the code (use the "Wiki imagemap" option).
<imagemap>
File:Country Calling Codes of Europe.png|thumb|500px
rect 229 343 393 601 [[UK]]
rect 124 452 225 568 [[Ireland]]
rect 182 792 344 1005 [[Spain]]
rect 235 605 520 801 [[France]]
</imagemap>
It says "Do not use techniques that require interaction to provide information". Presumably the information is available other ways, such as tables, the map is a convenience not a requirement. Or the image file description can include the table to make it easier for screen readers. -- GreenC16:32, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The table is human readable, though it is meant for applications that create dynamic presentations (graphs, interpretations). The URLs tracked here are related to archives, if there are other types of URLs that have a good use case let me know more tables can be created. Since it is on Commons it can be read by Lua templates similar to how {{NUMBEROF}} works.
Its purpose is to make it easier to spot edits tagged as reverted; these are in contribs, diffs, history and watchlist. It works as intended in Firefox on Windows, and Safari on an Apple iPad: all three properties are active. Now according to the CSS Text Decoration Module Level 3 documentation, this may be shortened to
It still works in Firefox, but not in Safari. Does anybody have any idea why it fails? I had considered that Safari only respects CSS Level 2, but the doc for that does not list the separate properties - only the shorthand, with only one of my three values shown as valid. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:56, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Based on the charts at caniuse, the shorthand didn't roll out when the other properties were made stable in Safari, which happened in 2014, which is when the -webkit- versions were first supported. Kind of just sounds like it got forgotten to me. Izno (talk) 22:34, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, so when I use the official dark theme for Wikipedia this 2021_Atlantic_hurricane_season#Storm_names, I noticed that the Storm Names section still uses the light theme when changing it to the dark theme while on the page. Refreshing the page does not fix the issue. May someone please fix it?
I'm using Google Chrome version Version 141.0.7390.108 (Official Build) (64-bit) on Windows 11.
Hello, so when I use the official dark theme for Wikipedia, this 2021_Atlantic_hurricane_season#Season effects, I noticed that the tabs under neath the tabs of the Season effects section still uses the light theme when changing it to the dark theme while on the page. Refreshing the page does not fix the issue. May someone please fix it?
I'm using Google Chrome version Version 141.0.7390.108 (Official Build) (64-bit) on Windows 11.
I have improved the rendering of that table in dark mode, but there is a quirk, at least for me. In dark mode, the links in the "Areas affected" column show as dark gray for me instead of the normal blue link color. When I copy the page's code to my sandbox, or copy a portion of it to Template:TC stats cyclone/testcases, I see the links in the normal blue color. Any insight would be appreciated. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:55, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't really, just some vary basic programming experience. One thing I noticed while digging through templates (I forget which and I am responding through email, its on my talk page) that one was literally just there to program white into all of the cells. ✶Quxyz✶ (talk) 01:04, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There's a style rule targeting (among other things) html.skin-theme-clientpref-nightbody.ns-0:not(.page-Main_Page).mw-parser-outputtable:not(.infobox):not(.navbox-inner):not(.navbox)td[style*="background"]:not([style*="transparent"]):not([style*="inherit"])a:not(.mw-selflink). The .ns-0 part makes it only apply to mainspace. It appears to have been added in gerrit:c/mediawiki/extensions/WikimediaMessages/+/1068884. Yay hacks. Anomie⚔01:51, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
First, thanks to Anomie for troubleshooting. Second, WTF, there is a link style for table cells with background colors that applies only in article space, and it underlines links and forces them to be gray instead of just applying the normal link color? In what world does any of that make sense? How do we disable that hack here on en.WP? – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:03, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If I make a simple table with background colors like
and put it into Special:ExpandTemplates in dark mode with a context of "John Smith" to try to show what it would look like in article space, or if I copy the table from the #Season effects section of the article above and do the same expansion, I get blue links. I don't see the long selector listed above (with ns-0 etc.) when I do that expansion. What is different? – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:15, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Special:ExpandTemplates gets ns--1 (Special) on the <body>, even if you put a mainspace title into the form. You should see it if you preview an edit to any random mainspace page. Or if you use your browser's developer tools to add the ns-0 class to the <body>, that should work for this too. Anomie⚔03:37, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My experience has been that the "context" field in Special:ExpandTemplates sets the name space correctly (e.g. {{main other}} works when you set the context to an article space title), so there might be something else going on. In any event, if I paste the above simple table code into 2021 Atlantic hurricane_season#Storm names and preview it in dark mode, I get a blue link for "John Dalton". It is still unclear to me why the hacky link style was being applied to the cyclone table and not to my simple table. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:07, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose someone could put something in MediaWiki:Vector-2022.css to override it, but that would also disable it for whatever it's actually trying to hack around. Or you could try filing a bug in Phabricator and hope they fix it. OTOH, you could also just do something like |style="background:var(--background-color-base, white); color:var(--color-base, #202122); --avoid-wmf-hack: inherit " | Foo, [[John Dalton]] to avoid it for this particular instance, since it looks for the style attribute to not contain "inherit" or "transparent". Anomie⚔03:49, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks again. I have implemented a hack to make links show in the normal blue color in dark mode. The silver lining is that their hacky detection method is easily hackable. I don't have the energy to file a bug, given my success rate in getting them fixed in the past. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:59, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for fixing the bug. It was affecting multiple pages as well, which also coincidentally fixed those. You also made these articles much more readable for so many users for years to come. Thank you all for your time. :)YoyoIveGotXP (talk) 04:09, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You're welcome. The main issue was with {{TC stats cyclone}}, which is used in 200 articles, so all of those got upgrades. I also fixed some technical but probably non-displaying dark mode issues in related templates including {{Saffir–Simpson small}}, which is used in 243 pages. Izno also made the initial fix, which may be needed in similar articles. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:32, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why doesn't visual editor support description lists?
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
To optimize how user data is stored in our databases, the saved preferences of users who haven't logged in for over five years and have fewer than 100 edits will be cleared. When those users return, default settings will apply. [2]
View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, there was a broken link from the GlobalContributions interface message to the XTools GlobalContributions page which has now been fixed. [3]
Updates for technical contributors
The work to reroute all traffic to API endpoints under the rest.php route through a common API gateway is now complete. If any issues are observed, please file a phabricator ticket to the Service Ops team board.
Edits to Wikidata references or qualifiers will now be shown in RecentChanges and Watchlist entries on other wikis less often, reducing unnecessary notifications. This will reduce the overall quantity of 'noisy' entries. Wikidata's own pages remain unchanged. [4]
What does users who haven't logged in for over five years mean, exactly? With WP:SUL, when I log in here, and I visit another WMF wiki, I'm also logged in there. But in order to preserve my settings on other WMF wikis, do I actually need to (a) log in as a separate act on each WMF wiki in order to generate a fresh login cookie; (b) log in on en.wp and visit each WMF wiki in order to send an existing login cookie; (c) log in on en.wp and ignore the other WMF wikis? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:13, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's not very clear, since the person responsible seems to be making several unwarranted assumptions as to how things actually work. But it does seem like if whatever they're looking at doesn't indicate activity on the specific wiki, they're intending to delete. Anomie⚔22:29, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It appears from this comment on phabricator that the decision will be made wiki by wiki, so if there's a WMF wiki that you've not logged in to for five years then your settings there will get cleared. (Though global settings will still apply, of course.) DLynch (WMF) (talk) 00:21, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@DLynch (WMF):if there's a WMF wiki that you've not logged in to for five years - this is itself unclear. Please see my original question: is logging in on en.wp sufficient, or do I need to explicitly log in on each WMF wiki as a separate action? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:42, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm Swedish, which means I'm obsessed with comparing anything Swedish to other countries, especially other Scandinavian countries. Recently I started to look into who are the translators of Swedish literature into Ukrainian. The article Swedish literature on Ukrainian Wikipedia (uk:Шведська література, 72 kbyte) is very long and detailed, so I immediately compared it to the corresponding articles for Norwegian and Danish literature. The Norwegian (uk:Норвезька література, 108 kbyte) is also detailed, but the Danish (uk:Данська література, 3.7 kbyte) is a joke. It turns out, Swedish Wikipedia's article about Danish literature (sv:Dansk litteratur, 2.7 kbyte) is also really short and poor. Here's where I want to create a matrix or table with columns for Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, etc. literature, and rows for the articles in Ukrainian, Swedish, English, German, etc. Wikipedia. Is there already some tool that will generate this table for me? You'd guess that WP:WikiProject Literature has done something like this, and that they would already have designed or requested a tool for it? But maybe not. But the need for such a tool is not limited to literature. Maybe friends of sports or music have already done this? Could Wikidata help me? LA2 (talk) 20:46, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, it does not seem to have worked, and I can't find innerstyle anywhere in Wikipedia:Extended_image_syntax. However, 'style="width:auto;background:black"' is in the HTML produced, and apparently in the right place. Even adding !important to it does not achieve the desired effect. This is presumably a CSS issue. — The Anome (talk) 17:58, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like it has some sort of transparency, if opened in the media viewer. This image seems to be jinxed in some way: I will try uploading it in a different format and see if it's better. — The Anome (talk) 18:17, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I re-uploaded it as a PNG and all is good. I think support for transparency in TIFF is not uniformly supported across browsers; PNG works fine for me. — The Anome (talk) 18:26, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at their website, I don't think there should really be transparency at all. It seems their design is against a dark blue background. It's just transparent in the header, so that they can also use it atop of a gradient of blue and with opacity on top of the scroll element.. I'm guessing they don't have an official design page published detailing things like this, but that puts us a bit in a bind, as that makes us have to guess how they want others to use their logo. (maybe they want the text flipped to black when it is shown on a white background, we can't really tell). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:28, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You can't with TemplateStyles. This is intentional, we want the page title to remain generally visible. You could hide it for yourself only by adding appropriate CSS to User:Harringstars/common.css, but everyone else would still see it. Anomie⚔17:14, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You can style a page name with WP:DISPLAYTITLE, e.g. make it smaller with {{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:70%;">{{FULLPAGENAME}}</span>}}. Don't try to hide it. We want page names to be visible, also on user pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:00, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@PrimeHunter I'm kind of surprised that's allowed by the software. I know it's been filtering out "display", "user-select", and "visibility" for the past decade or so, but there are plenty of WP:BEANS things you can do with the remaining allowed CSS. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE)14:55, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Silly me, turns out they're grayed out if they're in source mode, since they only make sense in visual mode. I've been trying to figure out how the background between ref tags turns green.. A diehard editor (talk | edits) 02:52, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh yes, I knew it was syntax highlighting, what I meant was that I was trying to figure out how I could get green ref tag backgrounds on my own wiki. Turns out I'll just have to wait for the next MW release. I created a common.css there which works for now.
Has some setting changed? Or is there something in preferences that I’ve accidentally switched or something? Or is this just a problem for me? Am on iPhone 14 latest iOS version using Chrome. FOARP (talk) 16:51, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Typing this on my ipad as always logged in but on my PC it wants me to enter a verification code to log in. Has now sent me near a dozen codes by email, none of which work. Can't get into my account on my PC now, where I do most of my article work. ♦ Dr. Blofeld18:04, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Gawk! That's awful. Don't know any other way to gain access. Ergo, recommend: email the WMF per Xaosflux and include link to this conversation. --Rosiestep (talk) 18:40, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Go to the login page, wait for the verification code form to show up, wait for the verification email and don't do anything else until it arrives, then enter the code.
The verification logic is not very sophisticated so e.g. if you restart login and get a second code, the first code won't work anymore. I suspect what happens is that the email takes a long time to arrive (might be an issue on our side or with the email provider) and people restart login, refresh the page, try logging in in multiple windows etc, and then they receive multiple codes (one for each time they loaded the form) most of which aren't valid anymore.
Alternatively, if you make sure to use the same IP address on your PC that you used on your iPad (probably it has some sort of hotspot option and the PC can connect through that?), that should skip the email verification.
--CiaPan (talk) 16:33, 16 October 2025 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Afd top. —Matrix ping mewhen u reply (t? - c) 18:59, 17 October 2025 (UTC)
Thank you all. I guess I'll carry on specifying the properties individually. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:28, 20 October 2025 (UTC)
View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, there was a broken link from the GlobalContributions interface message to the XTools GlobalContributions page which has now been fixed. [3]
Done – SD0001 (talk) 16:53, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:40, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
wikimedia.org. If you activate WP:2FA you will be able to use that instead. — xaosflux Talk 18:08, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
