Community noticeboard

Archives:
 * Archive 1 (23 July 2017 - 25 November 2017)
 * Archive 2 (1 December 2017 - 3 March 2018)
 * Archive 3 (3 March 2018 ~ )

1. Hebrew and 2. Adding Uses to My Wiki
Hi all,

First apology: I'm a Wiki novice and my English is not perfect. Sorry :)

1. Hebrew: The editor adds the lang=he and dir=rtl attributes correctly, but the paragraph align is still to the left. Please see the following captures https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zwxVjNnnntBd1cHOZJTFxlX6J73f8V7U

2. I want the Wiki to be private, but to be able to invite people to register and take part in the Wiki (this is a site for Education students in my University, and I assume it will be easier with the Uni if I do it this way and not allow public access due to copyright considerations). How do I do this?

Avinatbezeq (talk) 15:48, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
 * For 2., you can restrict access in two ways.
 * If you know everyone's email, you can just create an account, and let MediaWiki generate password and email to them. And after you create an account, you can access Special:UserRights  and grant   to the accounts you need.
 * If you do not know everyone's email (or if you can't for some reason), you can let them create an account on this wiki, then visit your wiki, and tell you the account name, so you can add them on the same interface I gave you above.
 * &mdash; revi  15:58, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks Revi for your answers!
 * For 2.1 - "Create an account" - In Miraheze? In Edustudent (my Wiki, Edustudent.miraheze.org)? In Wikipedia? - Sorry, thoroughly disoriented just now - newbie :(. Can you provide a link/page name?
 * For 1 - I've provided a link to the images. I had to struggle with the visual editor to add the link. It did not allow me (unspecified error). I finally had to resort to the "non-visual" one, which then made me prove I'm not a robot before it allowed me to add the exteranl link...
 * — Avinatbezeq (talk) 16:38, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
 * That should be on your wiki. Put  on your wiki search bar and enter. Click "", enter username/email address. They will automatically receive "your account on (your wiki) is created! Your password is: BLAH. Your password is only good for X days." Then you can visit   on your wiki, enter their username, click "members", enter the reason, and save. &mdash;  revi  16:47, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
 * 10X — Avinatbezeq (talk) 17:22, 12 May 2018 (UTC) Hello,
 * I am completing this question, as my demand is really close to Avinatbezeq's one. I have a private wiki, I want to add users. The solution 2 would be good to me, but :
 * If someone goes on "Special:CreateAccount" on my wiki (rseifv.miraheze.org), he can't acces to the page (permission refused).
 * A colleague (Marion Bouvier) created an account on meta.miraheze.org, but I can't find her on my "Special:UserRights" page. In meta, I can.
 * I tried to create her an account on my wiki (solution 2), but when I put her name, I am told that the user already exists.
 * What's wrong with this way of doing things ?  David LAFOND (talk) 10:29, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, I have never tried it, but now something I could do is create the account in Miraheze in any other public wiki (for example, Meta), after that, going to the private wiki, to the main page, is so that your account exists locally in the private wiki (because although the accounts exist globally, they do not appear in the list of local users of the wiki until the user in question does not enter the local wiki), so you should it is possible to add the user to some group of permissions, be it member, administrator, etc... GOTILON - Talk  - Contributions  12:56, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Avinatbezeq, Sorry for the late response:
 * You have to create an account for them, because "Special:CreateAccount" is not a whitelisted page for unauthorized person.
 * If they created an account on meta.miraheze.org, then they MUST visit your wiki at least once, so their account appears on the user list.
 * Tell your colleague to visit your wiki and log in from there (if they aren't), and you'll be able to use "Special:UserRights" and assign "member". &mdash; revi  18:47, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Request requiring admins on another wiki, where both of the admins are inactive
Where is the best place to go if you want an action to be done on a specific Miraheze wiki that requires admin attention? On the Lost Minecraft Miners Wiki, I would like for an edit to be made to the main page, which would require lowering its protection to semi (which may be a possibility, as there has not been a single case of vandalism in the history of the wiki), or an admin making the edit themselves. I notified the only bureaucrat about this on their talk page, and pinged the only admin, but I have not gotten any reply. I do think at some point another admin that's an active editor should probably be promoted so that admin actions will be able to be performed locally. There are also a lot of other requests I would like to have done that require admins - mostly editing the MediaWiki interface, such as the sidebar and the licenses page. I apologize if this is not the best place to put this (I know that it's probably not), but I wanted somebody to be aware of this.Madminecrafter12 (talk) 21:31, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Stewards' noticeboard is the correct place for a request like this. Though I'm sure a steward would read this here and handle it with time. John (talk) 21:35, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the quick reply. I'll request this on the Stewards' noticeboard if a steward doesn't reply to this or the task isn't done for a while.Madminecrafter12 (talk) 21:45, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅ (that is to say, I've just bumped down the protection level on the main page) -- Void  Whispers 22:01, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Alright, thank you. :)--Madminecrafter12 (talk) 00:02, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Search Console
He,

I was wondering, is it possible to at a Miraheze wiki to Googles Search Console? Nvda-nl (talk) 18:16, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Hello, I am not sure what you mean by this. Is it that you want your wiki to appear in Google searches? Reception123 (talk) ('C' ) 10:02, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * No, I mean adding a wiki to Google Search Console. Nvda-nl (talk) 11:23, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * What is required for adding it? Reception123 (talk) ('C' ) 11:44, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * You have to virify that you are the owner of the site by uploading an HTML file or adding a meta tach to the homepage. Nvda-nl (talk) 13:52, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * You can email me the file and I will upload it; then you must add it as soon as you can so I can remove it from the directory. Reception123 (talk) ('C' ) 15:00, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, Google requires that the file remain on the server. However, I have discovered that I can also virify my wiki by adding a txt record to my domain. I think that is a better solution in this case. Thanks for your help. Nvda-nl (talk) 16:27, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Ok then, happy to help. Reception123 (talk) ('C' ) 16:29, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Creator Request
I'm Coolie, and I joined Miraheze nearly a year ago. Since then, I have been working for the most part on my own wiki, Podpedia. On Meta, I sometimes see wiki requests get unanswered for several hours. As a wiki creator, I will try to reduce the average waiting time between a wiki being requested and created, so people are more likely to recommend Miraheze to others. CoolieCoolster (talk) 00:06, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * We absolutely need more wiki creators to reduce latency, which is going to be a huge factor in determining whether users follow through with creating their wikis. I'd request it myself but I've requested it twice and lost it from inactivity so I'm not requesting it again until I'm confident I'll be staying active. XOF (talk) 04:52, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Have you read and understood Wiki creators guide? Reception123 (talk) ('C' ) 10:02, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, I have. CoolieCoolster (talk) 11:31, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I see no problems so ✅ by me. A steward can assign the rights. Reception123 (talk) ('C' ) 11:34, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅ by John. Reception123 (talk) ('C' ) 15:47, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Is it possible to make wiki creation automatic?
There's a lot of latency for wiki creation now that could be a big turn-off for prospective users. The ability to sign up, create a new wiki and test it out would be a big factor for getting new users. Prospective users aren't likely to submit a request unless they've already made the choice to use Miraheze. If you're worried about spam you could have limit on wiki creation for new accounts or another strategy. XOF (talk) 04:50, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * There are several evident reasons why wiki requests are not automatic. The first is to avoid people who don't actually want a wiki from spamming wiki requests, creating dozens of wikis they don't actually want, and wasting server resources. The second would be to guarantee that to ensure that peoples' wikis do not contain material that goes against Miraheze's Terms and Conditions. CoolieCoolster (talk) 06:42, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think the idea in itself is bad, but it can currently not be done. The only way I see this being possible is if we have an AbuseFilter capable of fighting spam and inappropriate wikis. After that wiki creators would just check after the wiki is created to make sure that it complies, and mark it as "checked". Currently our CreateWiki abusefilter is public, and in my opinion a public filter is no good for this, so that would have to be changed. Reception123 (talk) (<font color="#FF0000">'C' ) 10:01, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Alternately, as a thought, what about simply making unchecked wikis private? Although, it would be a good idea to make the blacklist private should it become all that important. -- Void  Whispers 16:47, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
 * At first, the creation of wikis automatically sounds good, but I agree with Coolie, the manual creation avoids many problems, in addition, we must consider that Miraheze is still a small wikis farm, where the supervision of creation of wikis must be more meticulous, although the creation of wikis is not ruled out automatically <span style="color: #F8EFFB; font-family: Harrington; text-shadow: 0px 0px 0px #00A6AE,1px 1px 0px #00A6AE,2px 2px 0px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE;">GOTILON - <span style="color: #F8EFFB; font-family: Harrington; text-shadow: 0px 0px 0px #00A6AE,1px 1px 0px #00A6AE,2px 2px 0px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE;">Talk  - <span style="color: #F8EFFB; font-family: Harrington; text-shadow: 0px 0px 0px #00A6AE,1px 1px 0px #00A6AE,2px 2px 0px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE;">Contributions  13:55, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Other then the possibility of wikis being spammed, I don't see what problems are being prevented by not having wiki creation be automatic. It doesn't stop users from adding prohibited content because they can still do that after their wikis are approved.  Unless the wiki name or short description says something blatantly prohibited an approval process isn't going to solve that.  Even in those cases users who are going to make prohibited wikis can always bait and switch the description from what the wiki will actually be for.  In the case of wiki creation spam, an empty wiki shouldn't take up that much space and wiki approval still doesn't do anything to mitigate this because users who want to waste space can spam their own wikis after creation, which would be harder to detect because the spam would only be on their wiki instead of Meta like if they were spamming wiki creation.  I suspect it would take a very long time before spam created wikis would take up any meaningful amount of space.  This problem is incredibly easy to fix because all we have to do is set a limit on wiki creation.  It could even be something generous like 10 per day because legitimate users probably won't need that many at once and it gives a chance to easily delete them.  We could also implement a feature for nuking wikis created by a user in a given timeframe.
 * I don't see why Miraheze being a small wiki farm requires supervision of wiki creation to be meticulous. The opposite is true.  A large wiki farm with many people will see more abuse and so supervision there must be more meticulous.  If anything, Miraheze being a small farm makes it disastrous for growth for us not to have automatic wiki creation.  The majority of users who come here are going to want to create a wiki and test things out to see if Miraheze is suitable for their project idea.  They might try several wiki farms at once.  If they have to wait around they might go with another farm or abandon their idea altogether.  I can't possibly imagine what good it does us to require users to wait for wiki creation and it only harms us.  XOF (talk) 03:55, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
 * You're right in a lot of what you say, on the other hand, you have to consider that the more careful you have with the creation of wikis, the better for Miraheze, consider that Miraheze is new, in addition to not having a profit, every space badly spent, it's Miraheze's poorly spent money, see Finance and you'll see what resources Miraheze has and what it spends for hosting and backups <span style="color: #F8EFFB; font-family: Harrington; text-shadow: 0px 0px 0px #00A6AE,1px 1px 0px #00A6AE,2px 2px 0px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE;">GOTILON - <span style="color: #F8EFFB; font-family: Harrington; text-shadow: 0px 0px 0px #00A6AE,1px 1px 0px #00A6AE,2px 2px 0px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE;">Talk  - <span style="color: #F8EFFB; font-family: Harrington; text-shadow: 0px 0px 0px #00A6AE,1px 1px 0px #00A6AE,2px 2px 0px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE;">Contributions  13:11, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
 * As I've said above; I've been thinking about automation of wiki creation since the beginning, only the constraints are that unless we have a working system to prevent abuse and to check that wikis are compliant to the Content Policy, it can't work, in my opinion. Again, it would be nice if we could implement this system, and also have an automated wiki creation system. Reception123 (talk) (<font color="#FF0000">'C' ) 08:23, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Adding extensions via Special:ManageWiki
Yesterday on https://caeda.miraheze.org/, I checked the box for the Metrolook skin, however the wiki's skin hasn't changed yet. CoolieCoolster (talk) 17:53, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
 * You can open a task in Phabricator to find out more about the change that has not been made <span style="color: #F8EFFB; font-family: Harrington; text-shadow: 0px 0px 0px #00A6AE,1px 1px 0px #00A6AE,2px 2px 0px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE;">GOTILON - <span style="color: #F8EFFB; font-family: Harrington; text-shadow: 0px 0px 0px #00A6AE,1px 1px 0px #00A6AE,2px 2px 0px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE;">Talk  - <span style="color: #F8EFFB; font-family: Harrington; text-shadow: 0px 0px 0px #00A6AE,1px 1px 0px #00A6AE,2px 2px 0px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE;">Contributions  18:16, 23 May 2018 (UTC)
 * If you've just enabled a skin, it has to be turned on in preferences. IIRC setting the default skin still has to be done through phab. -- Void  Whispers 19:10, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Removal of remnants on articles
Hello. Over the course of bringing in some templates I needed for my wiki, I accidentally allowed the table tools to be corrupted or something of that sort, leading to the appearance of the

fragments that spill over from an infobox and into the article itself. I haven't been successful in tracking down the location of the template causing this to happen, though it has only appeared when using the Template:Infobox officeholder. My wiki is https://omniversalis.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page. Any support would be appreciated. Thank you. Vivaporius (talk) 16:13, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Did you use Special:Import? should be able to help you. Reception123  (talk) (<font color="#FF0000">'C' ) 19:52, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I used the Special:Import function to bring in the templates, but the error only appeared after I imported Template:SfnRef. I imported hundreds of templates from Wikipedia without the error appearing, but it just came up out of nowhere that one day. I removed Template:SfnRef and several templates prior to it without any success. A colleague of mine was able to get around the error himself, but I still can't find out where the error is coming from. I'll certain reach out to Void for his assistance in resolving the matter. Thank you. Vivaporius (talk) 20:51, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Malware
For several months I have been trying to advertise my wiki, Podpedia, on Google. Whenever I have tried, they have told me that Podpedia has malware on it. A couple of weeks ago I sent an email to Google asking them about this, and now I have gotten an email back from Google that confirms that Google's malware scanner detected malware on Podpedia:



So either Google is wrong, or on some part of Podpedia there is malware. Does anyone have any idea why Google says there is malware on my wiki?

CoolieCoolster (talk) 17:19, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for letting us know about the Malware notification, though that is very odd. However, please see User talk:CoolieCoolster, as advertising is prohibited on Miraheze. Reception123 (talk) (<font color="#FF0000">'C' ) 17:22, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I am not trying to add any ads to Podpedia. I want to advertise my wiki on Google, not the other way around. CoolieCoolster (talk) 17:24, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * There could be a technical problem behind this where software on the site is triggering detection by Google. Google is also a shitty company and they could be accusing your site of having malware because they don't like the software it's using or they don't like something about your wiki or Miraheze.  XOF (talk) 02:52, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Can you ask the Google representative to provide which URL is causing problem? &mdash; revi</tt>  15:05, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The ad that I created for my wiki has the link podpedia.org. CoolieCoolster (talk) 15:25, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Is there any way to get more details regarding this? I really see no way in which the site could have malware. Reception123 (talk) (<font color="#FF0000">'C' ) 19:33, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Sequence to having my own domain, hopefully for free.
Bear with my technical ignorance here. What I would like if possible is a unique wiki address. So for example:- wiki.campaign-labour.org. I had persuaded myself that I could ask miraheze for this and you would give me a IP address. I would then give the name to say somebody like Cloudfare or FreeDNS etc and the IP address. Then I would set up on the free DNS to match Miraheze re-direct requirements and all would be hunky dory.

I suspect I am being somewhat naive. But I didn't particularly want to go to a web provider at this stage (godaddy for example) and register for a service from them.

So am I being completely naive on how this all hangs together? Do I need to register a name with a separate provider? Could you provide me with a numpties guide to what I am looking to achieve?

Many thanks
 * Welcome aboard! What you are asking for is called Custom domains.  See also our FAQ document.   14:41 30-May-2018
 * We can't register a domain for someone else, sorry. &mdash; revi</tt>  15:13, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

I am quite ignorant on this to say the least. So if I look at your instructions my first step is to set up a DNS server. So I go to cloudfare and the first thing it says is "you haven't created a website" - then it asks for a name. So what name do I put in there? I don't have a website. Do I enter you web addess and then create a subdomain and then give you the subdomain details? I can't imagine that could be correct, as then I've added miraheze to cloudfare. If it is the case that I'll need to go to a website provider, then I can do that. Just I didn't want all there bells and whistles as your page has all I need in terms of software, servers etc.
 * What exactly is your domain provider? If we know what it is, maybe we can help you more easily <span style="color: #F8EFFB; font-family: Harrington; text-shadow: 0px 0px 0px #00A6AE,1px 1px 0px #00A6AE,2px 2px 0px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE;">GOTILON - <span style="color: #F8EFFB; font-family: Harrington; text-shadow: 0px 0px 0px #00A6AE,1px 1px 0px #00A6AE,2px 2px 0px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE;">Talk  - <span style="color: #F8EFFB; font-family: Harrington; text-shadow: 0px 0px 0px #00A6AE,1px 1px 0px #00A6AE,2px 2px 0px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE,0 0 7px #00A6AE;">Contributions  19:13, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

I think I've got where I am going wrong now. I'll take the necessary steps and raise the form when everything is set up correctly. Many thanks for your help.

How to mass-delete imported pages?
I foolishly imported a bunch of templates from another wiki thinking I might need them, but I really don't, and afterward I decided I'd rather build my own templates from scratch. But the Mass Delete tool will only delete pages I created on my wiki, not pages I imported. Is there anything I can do besides going through and deleting each imported page one by one? Zaluzianskya (talk) 18:38, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
 * If you have a list of pages, it's actually pretty easy to mass delete them, either by requesting the sysadmins to do it for you, or by using a userscript. -- Void  Whispers 19:24, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I certainly have no clue how to use a userscript (I thought I might try Pywikibot, but it seems that it doesn't work with Miraheze?), so should I just email the staff a list of the pages I need removed? Zaluzianskya (talk) 19:35, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
 * In that case, yeah, it would be best to send in a request, however I believe phabricator would be the better place to lodge such a request. -- Void  Whispers 20:02, 30 May 2018 (UTC)