Project:Support desk

I'm planning to build a documentation-style wiki for gaming tutorials, emulator setup guides, and troubleshooting articles. I already have a collection of Nintendo Switch emulator guides, and I'd like to organize them into a searchable knowledge base using MediaWiki.

Are there any recommended extensions or best practices for handling step-by-step guides, version-specific pages, categories, and internal navigation? I'd appreciate any suggestions from people who have built similar documentation sites. Lizadaniel (talk) 12:02, 23 July 2026 (UTC) Reply

@Lizadaniel: : maybe reach out to River?? --☠MarkAHershberger ☢(talk)☣ 17:29, 3 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

I'd probably recommend opening a wiki on Miraheze. If you don't have a lot of structured data then you probably don't need any special extensions tbh, I'd rely on categories, navboxes, and amboxes to denote the various versioned articles/sections. There's a huge variety in how wikis like this are structured, so my main recommendation is to start putting content up and once you have maybe 20-50 pages with content, ask in the miraheze discord server for more specific advice relating to the content already present (though by that point you might have a pretty good idea of what makes sense yourself). RheingoldRiver (talk) 16:28, 4 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

The Image folder of my Wiki-site was 1.6 GB in size. The Thumb folder inside this folder was 772 MB in size, and the Temp folder was 257 MB in size. I deleted the Thumb and Temp folders. No problem occurred. Then the Thumb folder was automatically created by itself, but its size was 25 MB. The Temp folder was not created. I want to know, did I do the right thing by deleting these two folders? And were these two folders really unnecessary? Шихалибеков (talk) 09:33, 25 July 2026 (UTC) Reply

They're not unnecessary, but it's fine to delete them. They'll be recreated anyway, when needed. – Ammarpad (talk) 18:15, 27 July 2026 (UTC) Reply

Yes, after 1 week, the "Temp" folder also appeared by itself. The size of the "Thumb" folder is growing rapidly, now it is 186.12 MB. Шихалибеков (talk) 19:38, 30 July 2026 (UTC) Reply

version -> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:REST_API/Reference/Sample_code:Create_page?oldid=8527286 defines t21 and t22. and the tunits work fine in API:REST_API/Reference/Sample_code:Create_page

now when sample code is transcluded in API:REST_API/Reference/ i see that the tunits t21 and t22 are grabbed from the calling source and no longer from the transcluded text - which is a nonsense. Do you agree ?

even if you renew the conflicting ids in the caller, it grabs value of its old ids which no longer are valid in the current source.

-- 🚨 Christian 🇫🇷 FR (talk) 20:07, 25 July 2026 (UTC) Reply

Yes Done Thanks @Pppery: use parameter 3= to protect TU id in tunit

# {{tunit|id=21|content=Create a user sandbox page on English Wikipedia|3=API:REST_API/Reference/Sample code:Create page}}

🚨 Christian 🇫🇷 FR (talk) 11:40, 27 July 2026 (UTC) Reply

I'm confused, I was just e-mailed by Mohamed_Qtop about this thread. @Mohamed_Qtop do you mind explaining, why? Moe Epsilon (talk) 14:01, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

And I'm getting very interesting error messages. For example:

 File "C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python314\site-packages\pywikibot\login.py", line 108, in __init__
 user = code_to_usr.get(site.code) or code_to_usr['*']
 17:17, 30 July 2026 (UTC)17:17, 30 July 2026 (UTC)~^^^^^

KeyError: '*'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):

 File "C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python314\site-packages\pywikibot\page\_decorators.py", line 32, in handle
 func(self, *args, **kwargs)
 Wikipedian12512(alt) (talk) 17:18, 30 July 2026 (UTC)^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 File "C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python314\site-packages\pywikibot\page\_basepage.py", line 1376, in _save
 done = self.site.editpage(self, summary=summary, **kwargs)
 File "C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python314\site-packages\pywikibot\site\_decorators.py", line 93, in callee
 return fn(self, *args, **kwargs)
 File "C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python314\site-packages\pywikibot\site\_apisite.py", line 2102, in editpage
 token = self.tokens['csrf']
 17:17, 30 July 2026 (UTC)17:17, 30 July 2026 (UTC)~^^^^^^^^
 File "C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python314\site-packages\pywikibot\site\_tokenwallet.py", line 42, in __getitem__
 self.site.login()
 17:17, 30 July 2026 (UTC)17:17, 30 July 2026 (UTC)17:17, 30 July 2026 (UTC)^^
 File "C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python314\site-packages\pywikibot\site\_apisite.py", line 424, in login
 login_manager = login.ClientLoginManager(site=self,
 user=self.username())
 File "C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python314\site-packages\pywikibot\login.py", line 110, in __init__
 raise NoUsernameError(
 ...<6 lines>...
 )Reply  

pywikibot.exceptions.NoUsernameError: ERROR: username for wikipedia:en is undefined. If you have a username for that site, please add a line to user config file (user-config.py) as follows: usernames['wikipedia']['en'] = 'myUsername'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):

 File "c:\Users\User\Desktop\Week E\SummerTech26-1\Uselesspython.py", line 13, in <module>
 page.save('Replacing "foo" with "bar" as test.')
 17:17, 30 July 2026 (UTC)Wikipedian12512(alt) (talk) 17:17, 30 July 2026 (UTC)^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 File "C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python314\site-packages\pywikibot\tools\_deprecate.py", line 427, in wrapper
 return obj(*__args, **__kw)
 File "C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python314\site-packages\pywikibot\page\_basepage.py", line 1361, in save
 self._save(summary=summary, watch=watch, minor=minor, bot=bot,
 17:17, 30 July 2026 (UTC)17:17, 30 July 2026 (UTC)^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 asynchronous=asynchronous, callback=callback,
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 cc=apply_cosmetic_changes, quiet=quiet, **kwargs)
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 File "C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python314\site-packages\pywikibot\page\_decorators.py", line 52, in wrapper
 handle(func, self, *args, **kwargs)
 17:17, 30 July 2026 (UTC)~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 File "C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python314\site-packages\pywikibot\page\_decorators.py", line 44, in handle
 raise OtherPageSaveError(self, err)Reply  

pywikibot.exceptions.OtherPageSaveError: Edit to page failed: ERROR: username for wikipedia:en is undefined. If you have a username for that site, please add a line to user config file (user-config.py) as follows: usernames['wikipedia']['en'] = 'myUsername' CRITICAL: Exiting due to uncaught exception OtherPageSaveError: Edit to page failed: ERROR: username for wikipedia:en is undefined. If you have a username for that site, please add a line to user config file (user-config.py) as follows: usernames['wikipedia']['en'] = 'myUsername' PS C:\Users\User\Desktop\Week E\SummerTech26-1>

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Here's my code:

import pywikibot

site = pywikibot.Site('en', 'wikipedia')

page = pywikibot.Page(site, 'User:Wikipedian12512(alt)/sandbox2')

page.text = page.text.replace('foo', 'bar')

page.save('Replacing "foo" with "bar" as test.')

print("Check")

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Here's my user config:

from pywikibot import config

usernames: dict = {}

usernames['wikipedia'] = {}

mylang='en'

family='wikipedia'

usernames['*']['*'] = 'Wikipedian12512(alt)'

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

And here's my environment.env:

PYWIKIBOT_DIR = ./pywikibot

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I am absolutely lost as to how I'm supposed to do this. I use visual studio, on Windows. Any ideas as to how to fix this? Wikipedian12512(alt) (talk) 17:18, 30 July 2026 (UTC) Reply

See "Get help" on Manual:Pywikibot where to bring up Pywikibot questions. Thanks! Malyacko (talk) 16:44, 31 July 2026 (UTC) Reply

Thanks. Wikipedian12512(alt) (talk) 22:18, 31 July 2026 (UTC) Reply

i'm getting this error when i go to the Special:Version page. i'm on 1.46 or whatever the newest stable version is and the thing that caused this error was adding:

$wgShellboxUrls = [
	'default' => 'http://shellbox.internal/shellbox'
];
$wgShellboxSecretKey = '[secret key]';
$wgShellRestrictionMethod = 'firejail';
wfLoadExtension( 'Score' );
$wgScoreTrim = true;

to make Score working.

the apache log doesn't show anything. RealPaxtonPenguin (talk) 17:26, 30 July 2026 (UTC) Reply

@RealPaxtonPenguin: : Add $wgDebugLogGroups['exception'] = $wgDebugLogGroups['error'] = "$wgTmpDirectory/error.log"; and reproduce the error. This should produce an error log inside your images/tmp directory. Then check the file and post its contents here if you need further help. Let me know if this helps. --☠MarkAHershberger ☢(talk)☣ 17:21, 3 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

the temp folder value isn't set and when i do set the variable to something it breaks everything due to a UUID file thing not being in the folder. plus no error log even when i do set the temp --RealPaxtonPenguin (talk) 20:12, 4 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

it cannot connect to the shellbox server. Login to the MediaWiki container, try to curl to the shellbox container. see if the connection works. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 22:30, 9 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

I found w:Module:Armenian, but is there another way of translating numbers in one system to another? For example from ٢٠٢٥ to 2025? Jonteemil (talk) 13:07, 2 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

Recently, I upgraded one of my wikis to MediaWiki version 1.43.9 and the PHP to version 8.1.2. When I open certain special pages (like Special:Version and Special:Preferences), however, I get an error related to type array. This only happened after the version upgrade.

Here is a link to the wiki page that showed the error: https://converter.penguinicewikis.com/mw19/index.php/Special:Version

How do I fix this? I need it done before the autumn/fall starts. Thank you for reading. Newman2 (talk) 01:02, 6 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

Which exact version of composer is installed on the server? MediaWiki requires at least version 2. Malyacko (talk) 10:56, 7 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

I actually got this question solved on Discord. My Composer version is 2.4.4. I may have more questions to ask on here though. Thanks anyways! Newman2 (talk) 17:30, 8 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

Page Special:ApiHelp/parse shows:

parseroutput
 Interne. Gives the JSON-serialized ParserOutput object for the parsed content. The format of this property may change at any time; mw:Manual:Parser cache/Serialization compatibility does not provide any guarantee of API stability.

and when transcluded in page -> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Parsing_wikitext/fr gives :

 Fournit la version HTML du rapport de limite. Ne fournit aucune donnée si disablelimitreport est positionné.
parseroutput
 Interne. Gives the JSON-serialized ParserOutput object for the parsed content. The format of this property may change at any time; mw:Manual:Parser cache/Serialization compatibility does not provide any guarantee of API stability.
parsetree
 L’arbre d’analyse XML....

where the english strings remains untranslated among the french text.

Since it is said that the generation is automatic, from where comes this gap ? and where/how can the translator provide the corresponding translation ?

Thanks. -- 🚨 Christian 🇫🇷 FR (talk) 11:15, 6 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

@Wladek92: You can see the strings that is the key to the translation by adding &uselang=qqx to the Special:ApiHelp/parse as in https://www.mediawiki.org/w/api.php?action=help&modules=parse&uselang=qqx . This will show you the key that matches the desired string. In this case, it is apihelp-parse-paramvalue-prop-parseroutput. Looking at the code for MediaWiki, you can see that the English string is used as a fallback for the missing French string. You can fix this by editing that file, or, better, using TranslateWiki. --☠MarkAHershberger ☢(talk)☣ 02:57, 13 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

@MarkAHershberger Nice and thanks, i understand and have access there. Will update.

May i ask you the reverse way ? that is message for example MediaWiki:Rest-property-desc-templateinfo-multipart in translatewiki, where is is used on MW to understand the context ? thanks -- 🚨 Christian 🇫🇷 FR (talk) 15:06, 13 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

Hello. I have been working on a wiki that I have upgraded from MediaWiki version 1.39.13 to 1.43.9. Today, however, I am beginning to not be able to view older pages on the wiki (even after importing pages). When I do, there is an error saying that there is no text on the page, and that I have to either search for it or recreate the page. Can you help me out? Thank you for reading. Newman2 (talk) 17:51, 8 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

(EDIT) I tried to run migration scripts in Terminal/SSH. However, the pages didn't reappear, unlike the process after the previous upgrade where they actually did get restored. I didn't notice the revision_actor_temp table dissolve from the wiki's PhpMyAdmin database either. I also tried importing XML dumps too, but I didn't have much luck. Newman2 (talk) 12:06, 12 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

"Whoops! The default skin for your wiki, defined in $wgDefaultSkin as minervaneue, is not available."

It's really cool for the error page to have tips and suggestions. Unfortunately, the suggestions are already performed. This has never happened to me before. I've installed mediawiki more times than I can count.

I downloaded the source from this website

mediawiki-1.46.0.tar.gz - 98,615,738 bytes

MD5sum: 8e027b5d56fc13ddfac36e21db974588

The files are owned properly,

sudo chown www-data:www-data wiki/

the files inside wiki/skins/MinervaNeue/

do in fact exist.

The Localsettings.php has a line:

wfLoadSkin( 'MinervaNeue' );

So, why did the installation break this time?

~2026-43898-34 (talk) 15:07, 10 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

If I just give up and choose a different skin, like MonoBook, then there is no error. It's as if minervaneue is dead-on-delivery in 1.46.0. Did someone goof the release?

#$wgDefaultSkin = "minervaneue";

$wgDefaultSkin = "MonoBook"; ~2026-43898-34 (talk) 15:16, 10 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

@~2026-43898-34: I ran into this as well. The debugging information was not helpful. Using

$wgDefaultSkin = "minerva";

did the trick. --☠MarkAHershberger ☢(talk)☣ 01:49, 12 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

Hello!

I recently played around with Language Converter on my sandbox on srwiki, and I tried escaping it using -{{(}}Kultur Shock{{)}}-, which rendered as Kultur Shock. I expected it to be escaped and render as -{Kultur Shock}-.

Is this a bug or intended behavior? QuickQuokka ^{[⁠talk • contribs]} 08:26, 11 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

Hello,

this is my first qustion i'mn asking here.Tried to find a solution here in wiki and elsewhere.

We have running a wikisystem with the version 1.45.2 under linux Debian. Everything works as expected. Now we want to update the wiki system to version 1.46.0. I test it on a fresh installed debian system (pure standard installation, nothing spcial) and a statndard wiki installation described in the installation chapter here in wiki (standard installation nothing special)

I have both versions installed in this one debian system (newest stable version)

The only lines we added in the LocalSettings.php on both versions are these lines :

$wgFileExtensions = array_merge( $wgFileExtensions, [
  'doc', 'docx', 'xls', 'xlsx', 'xltx', 'ppt', 'pptx', 'pdf',
  'odt', 'ods', 'odp', 'puml', 'drawio'
] );

So we added the possiblity to upload new MS office files like docx ,xlsx and others.

After editing andrestarting apache, we tried to upload a docx file !

In 1.45.2 it works, and in 1.46.0 it doesn't work. We get the following message on the wiki page:

File extension ".xlsx" does not match the detected MIME type of the file (application/epub+zip).

On 1.45.2 it works !

We haven't changed anything on any mime typ file in the system

We tested many other settings on the 1.46. wiki but nothing helps

These settings we had tested:

# Test für MIME Types Fehler im WIKI 
$wgVerifyMimeType = false; 
$wgStrictFileExtensions = true; 
# Erlaubt dem System, Dateien zu akzeptieren, 
# die intern wie ein EPUB aufgebaut sind
#$wgAllowedMimeTypes[] = 'application/epub+zip'; 
#$wgAllowedMimeTypes[] = 'application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document'; 
#$wgMimeDetectorCommand = 'file -bi'; 
#$wgMimeTypeFile = '/etc/mime.types'; 
#$wgMimeTypeFile = './ps_mime.types'; 
#$wgMimeTypeExtensions = [
# 'docx' => 'application/epub+zip'
#];

At the moment, we don't have any idea, what solution can help ? So thanks for help !

Regards Knimar (talk) 09:49, 12 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

This ... x={{#if:{{{x|}}}| {{{x}}} }} ... (or ofc {{abc|x= {{{x|}}} }}.) is the usual way to pass a names parameter from one template to an other template. (minor side effect is that if its was initially not set. It will now be set, but blank, in the next template.)

When I tried this ... {{#if:{{{x|}}}| x={{{x}}} }} ... its passing {{{1}}} with "x=<x value if any>". (I ofc use #ifeq here, but the effect is the same)

So, just curious*, if there is some code that would pass an Set&Empty parm. But effectively not pass it if it was not set.

*) If even possible the code might be interesting. But would probably not be fit for general use.

MvGulik (talk) 12:58, 12 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

• Pages with syntax highlighting errors