Wikibooks:Reading room/Technical Assistance

Welcome to the Technical Assistance reading room. Get assistance on questions related to MediaWiki markup, CSS, JavaScript, and such as they relate to Wikibooks. This is not a general-purpose technical support room.

To submit a bug notice or feature request for the MediaWiki software, visit Phabricator.

To get more information about the MediaWiki software, or to download your own copy, visit MediaWiki

There are also two IRC channels for technical help: #mediawiki^connect for issues about the software, and #mediawiki-core^connect for WMF server or configuration issues.

Visual editing project pages

Is there a reason visual editing is not enabled for project pages (e.g. Wikibooks namespace)? I 1) have a harder time using the source editor and 2) tend to make more, smaller edits when using it, which I know can be annoying. Thanks! —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 22:00, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

@Leaderboard @MarcGarver would either of you happen to know? Thanks! —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 16:14, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

@Kittycataclysm: It's not enabled across Wikimedia as far as I'll aware - I think you'll need to check on Phabricator to check if a configuration change is possible. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 16:18, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

I believe it is possible, with some limitations. There was a discussion here requesting it a year ago, which concluded "As long as there is community consensus (e.g., a discussion on that wiki) and no technical problems (e.g., the namespace does not contain huge pages like w:en:WP:ANI), then the team is happy to honor such requests". MarcGarver (discuss • contribs) 08:17, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I need help

At first as a non-native speaker to find a place, where I can ask my questions. I miss a page like b:de:Wikibooks:Ich brauche Hilfe. I'm not able to scan an English homepage with an unknown structure and unknown vocabulary to find the needle in the haystack.

Anyhow I need help to insert a functioning navigation to guitar/Campfire Diploma. {{autoheader}} and {{footer}} don't work, and I have no idea how to prepare everything so, that it works. After a lot of try and error I have no idea which navigation is the best. I tried {{Navbox}} but for mobile user this navi is hidden. (compare : Template_talk:Navbox/doc#Mobile_View) For the lessons I use {{Simple Page Navigation}} but this is very cumbersome and error-prone for song examples that are constantly being expanded. I have a lack of advice, although my request for some support is not exactly inconspicuous.

Chord changes G-C-D and Campfire strumming pattern

1. She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain
2. My Grandmas Going Biking In The Hen House
3. Oh, Susanna
4. Banana Boat Song (Day-O)
5. Oh Marry Don't You Weep
6. Down by the riverside
7. Banks of the Ohio
8. Oh My Darling Clementine
9. Cotton Fields
   more examples
10. Down on the Corner (CCR)
    //:(G - D G)2x (C G D G)2x://
11. Hotel Yorba (White Stripes)
    G C D G
12. Ich und ein Fass voller Wein (Versengold)
    //:G - D - C D7 G D (4x) G - C - G - D - (2x) C D G -:// 3/4 (Capo=2)
13. Leaving On A Jet Plane (John Denver) (!!!)
    //: G C G C - G C D D :// (D D C D)
14. Lord I Lift Your name On High (Rick Founds)
    G C D C (6x) G / C D Em C/ D G C G
15. Tom Dooly
    G - - D, - - - G

a navbox should be visible here

Greetings from the German Wikibooks team --Mjchael (discuss • contribs) 01:21, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Willkommen. Meine Deutsche ist nicht gut, so I will have to use English. :/ Do you need the navigation to appear on mobile browsers? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:34, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Justin! Thanks for trying. My English is for an everyday conversation quite good. Good enough to watch Dr. Who in original or following your answers. But the content and the vocabulary on your English help pages is a completely different matter. And yes, for now, it would help me if the {{Navbox}} shown above would appear in the mobile view. These would help all readers a lot. Of course, I am also happy to accept any advice on how I could do things better. --Mjchael (discuss • contribs) 02:13, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

In that case, you may want to manually make a navbox that doesn't use {{navbox}}, as that is specifically marked up to not display on mobile browsers. Another option is to have little headers and footers that just navigate to the next/previous subpage. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:21, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

I was almost afraid it would happen. At some point in the future let a programmer set a parameter to these template. Greetings --Mjchael (discuss • contribs) 02:31, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

United_States_Postage_Meter_Stamp_Catalog/GROUP_PPS_–_Private_Parcel_Service_stamps

Can someone else please sit down and resolve the misnesting in this, or remove the formatting so it's de-linted? It's taken me 5 attempts so far, and the efforts still fail, leaving missing, stripped or misnested tags, despite a LOT of effort being put in. I'd rather not waste my time further. ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 00:14, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Can some one please refer me to a referee so that I can have more than 20 hours worth of work restored that ShakespeareFan has destroyed! I have noted that I am not the first person who has noted this about ShakespeareFan, no mention is made of the monstroous amount of time that they destroyed, without any knowledge of the subject matter, sorry if I am irritated let's put this time, I am doing my best to be restrained!!!! Boris1951zz (discuss • contribs) 20:50, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

nOTE"Can you stop applying your "lint" change when you've been reverted once already please. I am the main editor of the book Understanding Air Safety in the Jet Age and I prefer to work on it in the style I am using, not with the non-content changes you have made. It is not good practice to repeatedly revert, without a meaningful edit summary, when the changes you are making are cosmetic and not contributing to the content of the book. Thanks - QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 16:58, 1 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

@QuiteUnusual: Apologies. I was working from the reported lint concerns at Special:LintErrors page, I hadn't noticed that you HAD previously reverted (and nothing about the previous revert is visible in my notifications).

ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 17:20, 1 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

The intended 'repair' was to resolve :

''<big>Welcome to the Wikibook on''<br /><br /><big>'''Understanding Air Safety in the Jet Age'''</big></big>''

which I felt should be <big>''Welcome to the Wikibook on''<br /><br /><big>'''Understanding Air Safety in the Jet Age'''</big></big>''

because it is good practice that any formatting has to be nested.

<Big>...</Big> is also nominally deprecated in more recent versions of HTML, and whilst it currently works, it will at some point be removed from HTML, at which point pages using it will not necessarily be presented as intended. A better approach would be define a {{big}} template that can be updated accordingly.

However, as you define 'repairs' like these as cosmetic, I am considering if I actually want to help improve Wikibooks if such contributions are likey to provoke concerns from other contributors. ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 17:29, 1 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

@QuiteUnusual: While the change is indeed cosmetic, the intention is good - lint errors are a huge issue that often manifest years later (as I've fixed many of the old Steward requests that had this issue). I personally think that his change was appropriate as a result, despite it looking "trivial and pointless" (the latter of which is not true in my opinion, and the former is true but not a mistake). Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 17:41, 1 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

Okay I withdraw the trivial and pointless comments, sorry. The principle problem for me was the changing of the whitespace which I'd deliberately included during editing as I find it easier to read. I will make the fixes you suggested above manually. Thanks QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 09:31, 2 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

And to be clear @ShakespeareFan00: I'm not suggesting that the work you are doing is a problem or that you should stop just that you should watch for any feedback from editors. I doubt there will be much. I'm surprised that you didn't get a notification automatically.

Note, however, I do consider it a problem, a major problem!!!! Boris1951zz (discuss • contribs) 22:15, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm not going to argue this, but if there was a loss of any actual content it was unintended. If someone else had undertaking the delinting earlier, my efforts would not have been needed. Can you give specific page where actual content as opposed to formatting may have been lost during the delinting process?

ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 22:21, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Furthermore , you've caused me enough concerns that I no longer wish to continue editing on this project. Goodbye.

ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 22:21, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

I've also reverted a considerable portion of my delinting-efforts. If another contributor thinks any of these were in fact good edits, I won't object to their reinstatment after careful consideration by that contributor.ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 05:48, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

So it seems you eventually found the error, a comment added during attempts to delint, I should have checked for this myself, and thanks for removing it. However, if something that a calm analysis of past edits (and debugging commenting is sometimes overlooked) would have found is going to provoke claims of destroyed work, it's paerhaps better if I do not continue editing? ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 19:28, 5 June 2024 (UTC)