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Wikibooks:Reading room/Technical Assistance

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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: #mediawikiconnect for issues about the software, and #mediawiki-coreconnect for WMF server or configuration issues.

Red links won’t turn blue[edit source]

I am just finishing the wikibook Pokémon Red and Blue. I had three redlinks to fill out (Victory Road, the Elite Four, and the Unknown Dungeon). I clicked on the first redlink and started writing the page. I saved the page. However, if I were to go back to the main page for the wikibook, the link to the now currently existing page stays red. If I am to click it, it takes me to that article in edit mode. Clearing my cookies turned the link blue, but that action is very annoying because it logs me out each time. Any assistance would be appreciated, although the red links might all be gone by that time. Thanks! SupremeUmanu (discusscontribs) 18:45, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pokémon Red and Blue/Victory Road exists. Not sure why the other two pages haven't saved. You may need to open/close your browser or restart your computer? Possibly this is a caching issue or a loss of session data? —Justin (koavf)TCM 19:38, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The problem has just gone away by itself. Thank you nevertheless! SupremeUmanu (discusscontribs) 20:01, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Then it may have been a caching issue on the server end or something. That is very rare. And forgive me if I seem pedantic, but you know that Pokémon Red and Blue/Saffron City and Pokémon Red and Blue/Gameplay are red, correct? —Justin (koavf)TCM 20:53, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Assistants?[edit source]

Hello! I've just stumbled upon Wikibooks assistants while cleaning up project pages, and I'm a little confused about what exactly they do. It seems like there is only one assistant (breadboard)—I've read the documentation, but I'm still unclear what its function is. I believe Pi zero created it years ago, and unfortunately I can't ask them due to their passing. @MarcGarver @Leaderboard @JackPotte I think you may have been around for the creation of this—do you have more knowledge about assistants/breadboard and how they work? —Kittycataclysm (discusscontribs) 14:25, 17 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Kittycataclysm: The problem is that Pi zero has unfortunately not given any examples for the breadboard. My understanding is that these are assistant tools - i.e, they are designed to help users in a complex task - in the breadboard case, with Help:Dialog (which itself is a tool enabling things such as buttons, text etc). Unfortunately, dialogs appear to be a Pi-zero thing; wikipedia:Help:Dialog doesn't exist. As a result, unless someone (or myself) can sit down and spend time understanding how their internals work, I'm not sure what we can do. Leaderboard (discusscontribs) 06:39, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, I didn't know these pages until now. As the Breadboard's code refers to a missing page, and it always displays "preview" when testing, it seems to be an ununsed malfunctioning stub. JackPotte (discusscontribs) 09:50, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I hope you don't mind me butting in here, @Kittycataclysm. I noticed you referred to Pi zero as a "they" and just wanted to tell you that w:Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians/2021#John Nathan Shutt (Pi zero) was a he. He had a tendency to build very sophisticated systems that many of those who worked with him didn't understand, but from what I understand he was brilliant, as well as a very decent human being. If you cannot figure out the current mystery you may want to ask someone at Wikinews. Ottawahitech (discusscontribs) 00:50, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Got it, thank you for letting me know! —Kittycataclysm (discusscontribs) 01:59, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Ottawahitech: Using gender-neutral pronouns isn't problematic and they never explicitly mentioned their favoured pronouns; nothing wrong on Kittycataclysm's part, FWIW. --SHB2000 (discusscontribs) 08:18, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. Much better to use gender-neutral rather than the wrong one, @SHB2000. I am often just as guilty as others calling a participant he/him when there is no basis for doing this. Ottawahitech (discusscontribs) 19:41, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I believe the intent is to let the editor test out how different parameters will impact the way a page is displayed without actually having to edit the page. So you put text on the breadboard, add the parameters and click "update view" to see how it looks, then change the parameters and try again... MarcGarver (discusscontribs) 16:09, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Following up (thanks for your responses, all)—I see what the breadboard is supposed to do, although as JackPotte says, it is broken. Given this, should it be deleted? I don't imagine anyone plans to fix it —Kittycataclysm (discusscontribs) 19:23, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Kittycataclysm: wouldn't delete it just as we wouldn't delete an outdated book - maybe provide a note or a template saying that it's old and broken? Leaderboard (discusscontribs) 07:09, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Got it, thank you—I'll do that. —Kittycataclysm (discusscontribs) 19:23, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Project-wide banners[edit source]

Hello! I feel like it would be good to advertise important community discussions/developments (e.g. policy development) in order to get as much feedback as possible. Is there any way to generate a banner viewable to all Wikibooks users? I know one was created to advertise when we changed the policy to allow strategy guides, but I'm not sure how to do this. Thanks! —Kittycataclysm (discusscontribs) 19:28, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki:SitenoticeJustin (koavf)TCM 19:53, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you!! —Kittycataclysm (discusscontribs) 22:56, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Any time. Thanks for all you do, KC. Sorry that my answers are sometimes so clipped--just a busy guy, but happy to help and happy that you solicited feedback on the AI policy. Looking forward to it being finalized. —Justin (koavf)TCM 23:09, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@ For reasons that I have not figured out yet I often do not get to see site notices, so I assume there are others like me on this wiki. Where would such notices be posted? Ottawahitech (discusscontribs) 19:47, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It seems you wanted to ping someone but didn't. The site notice should appear at the time of every page until or unless you 1.) dismiss it or 2.) use custom CSS to hide it. I have no clue why it wouldn't display other than those two reasons. —Justin (koavf)TCM 20:19, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Visual editing project pages[edit source]

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 (discusscontribs) 22:00, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]