User talk:Samwilson

By all means update the main Extension:EnableAbbrTags page if you so wish. I don't use mediawiki much these days so I won't have a chance to test your code, but if it works, please feel free. Thanks for your interest in the extension and mediawiki.

Cheers, --Jeffmcneill 13:37, 17 July 2009 (UTC) Reply

Thanks for the edit on Special:Diff/2320418, I guess my knowledge on Composer is a little dusty! SamanthaNguyen (talk) 01:59, 22 December 2016 (UTC) Reply

@SamanthaNguyen: no worries. :-) Yeah, Composer isn't really officially supported these days (although I'm not really sure why not). I use it for installing things though. :-) Sam Wilson 02:02, 22 December 2016 (UTC) Reply

All of the mentioned autoblock features regarding local storage and cookies can be nullified by browser security settings / preferences. - DSquirrelGM T P C 02:22, 3 March 2017 (UTC) Reply

@DSquirrelGM: That's true, but there are plenty of vandals out there with browser setups that will retain the cookie, and who won't know how (or won't think) to delete it. The cookie isn't meant to be the only protection, but it is one. Sam Wilson 03:04, 3 March 2017 (UTC) Reply

Hello! Thank you for leaving feedback on the Wikistats - Future per report and Feedback/Round 1 pages. We used it to build an interactive prototype of the next version of Wikistats. We're now looking for feedback on the visual design, and we'd love your input. We have some follow-up questions but mostly an open discussion at Request for feedback/Round2 (if you prefer email, write to milimetric@wikimedia.org and please include "Wikistats Design" in the subject). Please comment by Monday, May 1st so we can include your feedback into the first release of Wikistats 2.0. Thank you very much!

Your Wikistats 2.0 Team, -13:38, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Re Wikimedia_Developer_Summit/2018/Participants, it would certainly be nice if there were more consultants making a living out of MediaWiki on third parties. It's not impossible! There's quite a lot of unmet market actually, as I quickly figured out by doing WikiTeam work and by asking people to upgrade their wikis. --Nemo 14:29, 3 December 2017 (UTC) Reply

@Nemo bis: yeah, I agree, there's lots of installations out there looking for help! There are other FOSS projects out there that are much more inclusive of 3rd party users, I think. Sam Wilson 22:24, 3 December 2017 (UTC) Reply

Hi Sam,

regarding this

https://github.com/samwilson/commons-category-downloader

Is there an easier way for non-programmers to download items en masse in one category and subcategories? Artix Kreiger (talk) 15:05, 7 January 2018 (UTC) Reply

@Artix Kreiger: not that I know of, sorry. Do you need just a one-off download, or is this a common thing? Maybe I should look at adding a web front-end to the above tool. There might be something else for doing this; I couldn't find anything obvious when I wrote this script though. Sam Wilson 23:17, 7 January 2018 (UTC) Reply

Hi Sam, I'm seeing a database error with your MissedPages extension. I've reported it in the discussion page for https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MissedPages Vicarage (talk) 15:39, 18 May 2019 (UTC) Reply

I still do not see Genealogy listed in the installed extensions. The only issue I can think of is that I'm using Mediawiki version 1.34. I see that Graphviz isn't compatible with this version.

Any ideas?

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Nicholaslue (talk • contribs) 07:52, 15 August 2019

• Yes, unfortunately the GraphViz extension is not yet compatible. I've been trying to fix that, but also recently started adding support for Mermaid diagrams (which won't require any additional extension). However, the rest of the Genealogy extension should work correctly, and should certainly appear in Special:Version. Have you read through the how to debug manual page? That might help show up the error that's ocuring.
  —Sam Wilson 22:57, 15 August 2019 (UTC) Reply

I have turned on all debugging options. There's nothing on the page that's barking at me. I can see Genaeology/src/Hooks.php is loaded as a php included, but that's it. Changing the file name of Genealogy.i18n.magic.php creates a full site internal error so it appears the local settings file is pointing to the extension properly.

On a page where I use the person tag it shows up as: Template:Person

check out: http://colonialalbany.org

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Nicholaslue (talk • contribs) 08:33, 16 August 2019

• @Nicholaslue: Sorry about the problems! I'm sure we can figure it out. Firstly, it looks like you've found a bug: the Genealogy extension is not correctly registering itself to display on Special:Version! I'll fix that now. But it doesn't matter for functionality, so you should still be able to get things working. The main point you raise is that the {{person}} template doesn't exist. This template isn't created by the extension, because every site will want it to be slightly different. There is an example template in the extension's directory (and here) that you can copy. I'd be happy to help you get it set up on the colonialalbany wiki!
  —Sam Wilson 01:00, 19 August 2019 (UTC) Reply

I granted you access to the site. I'm a bit new to Mediawiki but we thought it would be perfect for this kind of content. I appreciate you showing me how it's done.

• @Nicholaslue: I've made a start on the 'person' template. See what you think. I'll reply more over there. Sam Wilson 06:02, 20 August 2019 (UTC) Reply

Hello Sam,

Not to add to the Genealogy Extension issues, but I am having problems with the {{#genealogy:partners}} working. Both on my personal website and on the https://tools.wmflabs.org/genealogy/wiki/Main_Page website, I cannot seem to get the partners to display using partner1, partner2, etc. Is this something you are also seeing or are you able to use {{#genealogy:partners}} just fine? Mitchell316 (talk) 17:11, 29 August 2019 (UTC) Reply

@Mitchell316: {{#genealogy:partners}} is for listing all partners; it won't display anything unless a page uses {{#genealogy:partner|Partner Name Here}} to define a partner (which can happen on either partner's page). Is your website public? I could have a look at your setup. Sorry it's not more straightforward! —Sam Wilson 04:32, 30 August 2019 (UTC) Reply

Sam,

I should clarify that I have been defining the partners with {{#genealogy:partner|Partner Name Here}} before using {{#genealogy:partners}}. If I go to a page on Joe Smith and write:

 {{#genealogy:partner|Mary Smith}} {{#genealogy:partners}}  

I don't get any results. I haven't noticed this problem until recently, and I remember that it was working fine not too long ago, so that is why I reached out to you.

However, I have been tinkering with all sorts of templates, forms, etc., so it is very conceivable that it is on my end. By any chance, can you confirm that on your site the partners display is working fine?

Aside from this, I have been working on a website similar to what you have created on https://tools.wmflabs.org/genealogy/wiki/Main_Page . Currently, my site is public, but its mostly been back end work. I've read all about the wikimedia genealogy project and the current support and opposition. I think that there is a great potential for a genealogical based wiki project to succeed. I'm not sure how involved you are in actual genealogy as compared with the software engineering, but the only valid sites that use MediaWiki are Familypedia and WikiTree, both of which I feel are lacking. Currently, I have developed a template that automatically creates an infobox (similar to the aforementioned website) along with an adjacent Ahnentafel tree that automatically displays 4 generations using SMW.

Ultimately, I plan to develop a finalized version of what a Wiki-structured genealogy website should be, and then go live on some separate domain. I feel that it would be a lot easier to gain support with an already created site.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Mitchell316 (talk • contribs) 16:03, 30 August 2019

@Mitchell316: That sounds like a great project! The issue you're having sounds like it could be related to caching. Does re-parsing a page (?action=purge) help? Are all jobs being run? Do you get correct output for {{#genealogy:siblings}} or {{#genealogy:children}}? I have the extension working on archives.org.au if you want to have a look at how it's set up there. —Sam Wilson 06:04, 1 September 2019 (UTC) Reply

• Hi, you have use e-mail?--Msnhinet8 (talk) 01:36, 9 October 2019 (UTC) Reply
  • @Msnhinet8: Do you mean in relation to Manual_talk:Wiki_family#wiki_farms? I do use email, but I'd rather you ask your questions publicly so that other people can benefit from them and more people are able to answer them. If you want to chat, there's IRC: #mediawiki ^connect . —Sam Wilson 03:10, 9 October 2019 (UTC) Reply
• I have send e-mail give you, you has look?--Msnhinet8 (talk) 03:22, 9 October 2019 (UTC) Reply
• at home staff?--Msnhinet8 (talk) 03:33, 9 October 2019 (UTC) Reply
• my wiki farm want install skin:monaco.--Msnhinet8 (talk) 03:36, 9 October 2019 (UTC) Reply
  • @Msnhinet8: I'm not going to log in to your VPS, nor install anything for you. Please ask actual questions about the troubles you're having! I'm only too happy to help. It sounds like you might not be very familiar with running a server, in which case you might be more interested in a managed wiki from somewhere like Miraheze. —Sam Wilson 03:40, 9 October 2019 (UTC) Reply
• so apart from miraheze and wikia, also the other free mediawiki farm?--Msnhinet8 (talk) 03:42, 9 October 2019 (UTC) Reply

• I want to use Skin:Monaco, but it not update, can you help me?--Msnhinet8 (talk) 03:50, 9 October 2019 (UTC) Reply

@94rain: No worries! I figured something like that must have happened. —Sam Wilson 00:14, 28 October 2019 (UTC) Reply

Hey, I've got a few questions regarding how I'll have to work on the Index page-list editing widget. Can I contact you over email (or even IRC) regarding those questions? Also, could you take a look at the draft proposal T247157 that I have put together and provide some feedback or comments on how to improve it :)

P.S: Could you point me to some examples of like Javascript-based UI widgets that are currently being used by the community, I sort of want to get an intuition about the general architecture and implementation of these widgets and how the PHP and JS parts work together :) --Sohom data (talk) 18:19, 15 March 2020 (UTC) Reply

@Sohom data: sure! I've replied on that ticket. I'm not in IRC much these days; Matrix is a better way to catch me for chat. I'm @samwilson:matrix.org . —Sam Wilson 03:34, 17 March 2020 (UTC) Reply

Hey there! I've been tryin to use Mermaid with Genealogy since Miraheze got the newest update few days ago, and the explanation under Extension info is rather confusing. Talking specifically about this:

{{#genealogy:tree|ancestors=List|descendants=List|format=mermaid}}

You mention lists to be newline separated, but then ancestry list ends up like this:

Maternal Grandmother, Maternal Grandfather, Paternal Grandfather, Paternal Grandmother
Mother, Father

In this case it forces all the first line to be one new page, instead of four? How do you need to format it to properly link to separate entities per list? Is there anyway I can easily define people per list? Do I have to have pre-setup people pages to use that feature?

I've also played around with mermaid alone, and thought something like this could be more intuitive, though by mermaid alone I cannot link to the pages or use those as variables, so it still doesn't do it justice. Just thought maybe it would be a good inspiration for the future of the plugin.

{{#mermaid:graph TB;
maternalgrandfather["[[matgrandpa]]"] --- mother 
maternalgrandmother["[[matgrandma]]"] --- mother 
paternalgrandfather["[[patgrandpa]]"] --- father
paternalgrandmother["[[patgrandma]]"] --- father
mother["[[mother]]"] --- person["[[person]]"]
father["[[father]]"] --- person
partner01("[[partner01]]") --- child01
person --- child01["[[child01a]]"]
person --- child02["[[child02a]], [[child02b]]"]
partner02("[[partner02]]") --- child02
}}

Maybe it's just me being dummy, but I'm struggling with figuring it all out. A more in-depth tutorial for sure would help with bringing more people to use the extension! Regardless, thank you for your time put into this. --Yevvieart (talk) 06:04, 1 August 2020 (UTC) Reply

I was just thinking about that stuff actually! Good timing. The newline-delimited thing is a bit counter-intuitive; probably we should add an option to use a different delimiter (e.g. a semicolon). But anyway, your example should look something like the following:

{{#genealogy:tree
|ancestors=
Mother
Father
|descendants=
Maternal Grandmother
Maternal Grandfather
Paternal Grandfather
Paternal Grandmother
|format=mermaid}}

Does that work? By the way, I'm also working on improving the Diagrams extension so that it can be installed on Miraheze, and then Graphviz graphs will be possible as well as Mermaid. —Sam Wilson 06:13, 1 August 2020 (UTC) (oops, forgot to ping @Yevvieart: Sam Wilson 06:16, 1 August 2020 (UTC) )Reply

That tosses them one after another in a line, but doesn't form any flowchart or anything resembling family tree. Just disconnected nodes thrown in one column. It's not 100% necessary for me to use it that way though, I was just wondering if it was the problem on my side or something with the newest mermaid update or what. I may just use hand-scripted mermaid for trees and genealogy for the tables and person profiles, as this way both are far more customizable. @Samwilson: --Yevvieart (talk) 06:43, 1 August 2020 (UTC) Reply

@Yevvieart: are the page names you're entering for 'descendants' and 'ancestors' linked as relations of other pages? Are they red in the diagram? It might be that they've got the wrong letter case or something. The names you list there should be shown in a tree with the same relation nodes as they get listed with on their own pages (siblings, etc.). The demo wiki at toolforge:genealogy might be a useful place to test things, where I can come and help. —Sam Wilson

Your instance of mediawiki-feeds returns 404 - Not Found when I try to use it, even with the default parameters. Are you still maintaining it? 2A01:110F:BB5:4D00:4A66:5D43:53B6:EC6F 16:54, 18 February 2021 (UTC) Reply

@2A01:110F:BB5:4D00:4A66:5D43:53B6:EC6F: I am (sort of) still maintaining it. Thanks for pointing out this error! I've fixed it and it should be working again now. — Sam Wilson 22:09, 18 February 2021 (UTC) Reply

Hi!

You get this message because you are an admin on a Wikimedia wiki.

When someone edits a Wikimedia wiki without being logged in today, we show their IP address. As you may already know, we will not be able to do this in the future. This is a decision by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department, because norms and regulations for privacy online have changed.

Instead of the IP we will show a masked identity. You as an admin will still be able to access the IP. There will also be a new user right for those who need to see the full IPs of unregistered users to fight vandalism, harassment and spam without being admins. Patrollers will also see part of the IP even without this user right. We are also working on better tools to help.

If you have not seen it before, you can read more on Meta. If you want to make sure you don’t miss technical changes on the Wikimedia wikis, you can subscribe to the weekly technical newsletter.

We have two suggested ways this identity could work. We would appreciate your feedback on which way you think would work best for you and your wiki, now and in the future. You can let us know on the talk page. You can write in your language. The suggestions were posted in October and we will decide after 17 January.

Thank you. /Johan (WMF)

18:17, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for responding to my comments and question about the accounts. ... PeterEasthope (talk) 05:43, 26 January 2025 (UTC) Reply

@PeterEasthope: No worries! Feel free to improve the docs if you find things that are unclear. :) Sam Wilson 06:33, 26 January 2025 (UTC) Reply

I've been running MediaWiki 1.16 with the old Graphviz extension for years. I had modified the <graphviz> tag to take a parameter that would place the image left or right, with running text beside it, for example:

<graphviz location='right'>

But I've been forced to upgrade Mediawiki, and the old Graphviz extension no longer works.

Is something like this possible in Diagrams?

I replaced the <div class="ext-diagrams"> with "floatright" on line #261 of Diagrams.php, but the HTML being produced for the dot image still comes out in a <div class="ext-diagrams">.

//		return Html::rawElement( 'div', [ 'class' => 'ext-diagrams' ], $out );
		return Html::rawElement( 'div', [ 'class' => 'floatright' ], $out );

Any thoughts on the best way to get the images produced by Diagrams to have running text on the left?

Thanks for any assistance you can offer!

Jan Steinman (talk) 06:51, 20 February 2025 (UTC) Reply

@Jan Steinman: Are you purging the cache after modifying that? It's odd that it doesn't apply it. Anyway, this does sound like a useful idea. Shouldn't it handle the whole thumb/frame/caption thing as well though? i.e. if you do align="right" then it'd be like a thumbnail image? Or perhaps just class="foobar" (to add whatever extra classes) would suffice and it'd be more general? Sam Wilson 07:23, 20 February 2025 (UTC) Reply

Thanks for your interest in this!

I will try nuking the cache, but I had to re-boot the machine for some other reason, so it's odd that the cache would survive a re-boot.

I agree that a fully general image control, using all the options available for [[Image:...]] would be ideal! Jan Steinman (talk) 19:00, 20 February 2025 (UTC) Reply

Check my latest comment in the Support Desk. UnnamedChannel079 (talk) 17:33, 8 July 2025 (UTC) Reply

Hi there,

i use your Diagrams-Extension and i have some requests and questension.

1. When something is wrong, i see in the Error-Message that it uses Mermaid 9. Is it possible, you change it to 11 in the next release?
2. When i try code from mermaid.live for gantt-diagrams or xy-charts, it is not working with your Extension. I don't know what to do. Is it not supported by your Extension or is the Problem the old Version of mermaid?

I know, you work in this for free and i am very thankfull for this.

But could you support newer versions of mermaid in the next Version of the extension? This would be very cool.

Our Wikis are www.vierte-gewalt.ch and zen-investor.ch (they are in german). ~2025-29055-84 (talk) 17:18, 16 October 2025 (UTC) Reply

@~2025-29055-84: I've had a quick look at upgrading, and it wasn't immediately simple. Would you mind creating a Phabricator task? Thanks! Sam Wilson 05:39, 17 October 2025 (UTC) Reply

Thanks for the reply. Trouble is I now want to know more, but I assume that it is best not to "chat" in the Phab ticket.

• Where in the system is the text encoding defined for a text field?
• Is all text just always Unicode?
• Is it always UTF_8, so that byte-length for characters is variable?

I had a long look in the Manual but oddly could not find many reference to UTF-8 or the encoding of text. Did I miss the obvious place to check or is it just deemed to be obvious? — GhostInTheMachine ^talk 19:11, 4 November 2025 (UTC) Reply

@GhostInTheMachine: Text is always UTF-8, yep, and the watchlist labels are stored in a varbinary DB column (see Manual:Schema_changes#Data_types), i.e. which doesn't have a character set. I guess it's not well-documented as it's just assumed to be the standard. Sam Wilson 00:51, 5 November 2025 (UTC) Reply

Hello apologies if this is the wrong place for this and please redirect me if so, but I have no idea what I am doing here (far beyond my technical knowledge) and all the different places where you can ask or complain about things seem quite insistent on making sure you're not asking the wrong thing in the wrong place. Anyway you seem to be the person who did the thing I'm pretty sure I'm asking about, so I figured just ask directly, you'll at least know where this inquiry should go.

I do a lot of edits on French Wikisource (and once in a blue moon on English, this issue appears to be identical in both), and in particular a lot of «modifications par web mobile en mode avancé»... Previously, when editing a Page: page, the window that the image shows up in took the aspect ratio of the image itself automatically, so when you hit the zoom-0 magnifying glass, the page image was fit exactly to to the window. This was perfect, especially for mobile, unless huge margins, tiny text, columns etc.

After the recent modification, the window is really tall, zoom-0 makes the image be stuck up at the top, it's oo tall for mobile, I see the adjustment bar, it adjusts on desktop so that's useable (altho worse than it was before imho), but on mobile one cannot click and drag it, so I unless I am missing something I can't adjust it and am stuck with the too-tall window and having to scroll and leave the text box etc to hit different shortcuts etc. (adjusting on desktop has no effect on mobile)

So I don't know what exact behind-the-scenes thing I am complaining about, whether it should be a different default height, some setting to make it work on mobile differently than not, or put it back the way it was; but that is my comment lol. Lmk if the message is even comprehensible and then do with it what you will (or tell me to say it somewhere else). Thanks Psephos (talk) 19:40, 29 January 2026 (UTC) Reply

Same for me. Sicarov (talk) 20:47, 29 January 2026 (UTC) Reply

@Psephos and Sicarov: Sorry about this! The relevant task is T393231. Would you mind adding a comment there with some screenshots if possible, to illustrate the issues you're seeing? I'm working on what I hope is a fix now, and we should have everything back to normal soon! Sam Wilson 21:33, 29 January 2026 (UTC) Reply

thats in revision deletion. Enable Some parts to be suppressed while other parts of the revision be revision deleted without suppression. The mediawiki currently does not allow partial supression while revision deleted in other parts ~2026-27922-65 (talk) 03:38, 9 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

@~2026-27922-65: I would suggest opening a task on Phabricator. Sam Wilson 06:59, 11 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

open the task if not already, if opened which task? ~2026-28669-02 (talk) 13:38, 12 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

hello @Samwilson

• same error from 2017 https://github.com/samwilson/mediawiki-feeds/issues/4
• trying to add https://mediawiki-feeds.toolforge.org/feed?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wikidata.org%2Fwiki%2FWikidata%3AStatus_updates%2F&category=Category%3AWikidata%3AStatus+updates&num=20&title=wd&type=rss

কল্কি (kalki) (hello, who is this ?) 16:52, 8 June 2026 (UTC) Reply

@কল্কি: Thanks for reporting this! I'll fix it up to be more resilient of different project URLs. In the meantime, a workaround is to use https://www.wikidata.org/w as the URL, i.e. https://mediawiki-feeds.toolforge.org/feed?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wikidata.org%2Fw%2F&category=Category%3AWikidata%3AStatus+updates&num=20&title=wd&type=rss Sam Wilson 01:25, 9 June 2026 (UTC) Reply