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A place to talk about tech related to a Wikimedia wiki.

Have a technical wiki question? Ask here. This can include, for example:

• requests for new tools, scripts, and bots;
• help with CSS or JavaScript;
• API help;
• and data collection help (including database queries).

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If you are not using the "New topic tool", such as the "Ask a question" button above, please sign manually using four tildes (~~~~), or by clicking on the signature icon ; this will automatically generate your name and the current timestamp when you publish your changes.

Tool to get a wiki Page tagged for a custom date

Hi could you please see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T407051 and advise the best suitable tool, as I got confused Thanks Gryllida 11:36, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Editing Watchlists on different Wikimedia projects

Hi, I've recently noticed that the watchlist editing page acts different on different Wikimedia projects. For instance:

• on Wikipedia (tested on svWP) the table of contents is situated either at the top or in the sidebar depending on Vector and watched pages that have a time limit - that is they have a watchlist time period that is not permanent - are sorted at the top of each list. This is the preferred behavior:
• while on other projects - such as Wiktionary, Wikisource, and Commons - the table of contents is missing altogether and pages with a time period are sorted in with the rest of the pages.

Why is this? And is a solution being worked on? Sabelöga (talk) 10:37, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I believe this is related to the work to add "pagination" to the Special:EditWatchlist page (phab:T41510 - splitting that page into multiple pages, if it's too big) to resolve the problem of editors getting a timeout-error when we have many thousands of pages watchlisted. From the discussion there, it looks like the temporary-watchlist sorting behaviour might be permanently changed. I'll ask about the TOC change. Thanks for noting. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 17:46, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

As @Quiddity (WMF) says - yes this is related to the work to paginate Special:EditWatchlist. You're seeing different behaviours on different wikis because changes to the code roll out on a phased basis. We removed the ToC because it's superfluous once pagination is enabled - which it will be soon, we just need to double check everything is ok.

As for the sorting - ordering by expiry was slowing down the underlying database queries by a factor of 100, which creates knock-on performance problems across wikis. If there's a lot of demand for it from the community we can consider turning it back on, but we can't just turn it back on as it was - we'd need to make changes to the database tables themselves which is, alas, not a trivial piece of work CParle (WMF) (talk) 19:21, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Oh if you want to see what the page looks like with pagination turned on you can add ?paginate=1 to the url CParle (WMF) (talk) 19:24, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

I see, thanks for your replies  Like I also see that the change has been rolled out on svWP as well. And yes, pagination is indeed needed for me atleast on Wikidata. A filter for time watched pages would however be appreciated when editing those. Sabelöga (talk) 12:58, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

I'm dissatisfied with the changes, since I relied on the order of the pages by dates, but now if something is 2 days left in my watchlist, it's not at the beginning but in the middle or end or I don't know where, and with pagination it could get worse, then it wouldn't be as easy to use "search this page" on my browser to find pages that soon "expire". Can I go to Preferences to change the order in my watchlist to how it was the day before yesterday, like how I can go to Preferences to change my vector from what is default? And if not, is there a place where users are bringing up their opinions about the changes? Grey ghost (talk) 11:44, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

I would also very welcome it to have the old display scheme back. Optionally, if that helps. The old scheme made it way easier for me to weed out my watch list, and it was very helpful to check it with regards to articles about to vanish from my watchlist about which I had recently read about relevant changes. Kind regards, Grueslayer (talk) 20:52, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

@Grey ghost and @Sabelöga I created a wish on the community wishlist to re-implement sort-by-expiry, just so we can get some idea of how important it is to people.

As it says in the wish we can't re-enable sort-by-expiry as it was because the queries were just too slow, but we might be able to figure out some alternative way of doing it instead

If it's important to you (or to anyone you know), please support the wish!

CParle (WMF) (talk) 16:59, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

Openwaterpedia

Hi. Trying to edit my husband's page. I cannot get in to do so. Help! Nicezer (talk) 08:49, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

@Nicezer: Hi. Please feel free to bring that up on the unmentioned website that you refer to, and what exactly makes you think that you "cannot get in" and what does happen. I assume there is no page about your husband on meta.wikimedia.org. Thanks, --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 09:03, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

He has a page on Openwaterpedia. Perhaps I am asking in thd wrong place? Nicezer (talk) 09:23, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

thank you for your response Nicezer (talk) 09:25, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

@Nicezer Yeah, this would be the wrong place, I'm afraid. I'm not certain how to get in contact with them (as I haven't seen that website before now), but I found this contact form for (what seems like it might be) the organisation that runs the website, in case that helps at all. Best, ‍—‍a smart kitten_[meow] 13:06, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Hello. I have figured it out. Thank you! I am closing thd inquiry/ question. Appreciate the responses Nicezer (talk) 13:08, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Imminent risk to lose my wiki account, please fix this

• mw:Help:Extension:EmailAuth
• phab:T408383
• Tech/Archives/2025#Obligatory_security_rules_that_users_cannot_decide

@User:Johannnes89, @User:EMill-WMF: This had never happened before between 2016 and 2025-September. This is a new absurd idea. Completely unnecessary, disruptive, and dangerous. Please allow users to disable this nonsense, in good time before I finally lose my account. Do I really have to edit via temporary accounts only from now on? Taylor 49 (talk) 12:47, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Double icon

Hi. The two Find and Replace icons in the ACE editor, it's a bug or a feature? One local, another from the wikitext editor. IKhitron (talk) 19:14, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for reporting this! I have fix in the works. Until we get the fix deployed, you can ignore the button the right. It probably won't work much of the time. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 20:09, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Fixed. Thanks again, MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 07:29, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

My inability to get Wikipedia on my Vizio TV but not have the Internet

I've searched for a way to do the above, so far unsuccessfully. I'm an indefatigable seeker of knowledge, and having your site on my home tv would be a gift beyond description. I go to the library when I need the Internet, terribly inconvenient for one as obsessed with knowledge as I am. If anyone can think of a solution, I'd be grateful beyond measure. Lovellectual (Rick Cohen) ~2025-31609-18 (talk) 01:09, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

A breaking change?

Hi. We are group1, and all the night people are reporting about more and more scripts and gadgets that do not work any more. Looks like that something changed in the page HTML structure, so JQuery selectors do not find their targets. Was something like that in this week train? Thank you. IKhitron (talk) 07:18, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

Later. Now I think it's a synchronization problem. Because a gadget does nothing, even "alert()", but if I add another alert earlier in its code, both work, and the gadget do the part it supposed to do until the second alert, and nothing after that. IKhitron (talk) 10:09, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

This was a problem with loading gadgets in certain scenarios, indeed: T409367. It's now fixed. Msz2001 (talk) 11:39, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

Great, thanks. IKhitron (talk) 11:40, 6 November 2025 (UTC)