Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/August 2020

Human behaviour
--2402:3A80:B71:3D40:0:47:C6B9:F701 (discuss) 21:16, 2 August 2020 (UTC)hello,my name is Vishal singh,I am from India. My question is,I see many peoples who describes human behaviour in different ways sometimes it's very irritating.the most common thing is when a youngster searching for motive but they confused and frustrated much during in unemployment they doubt himself.i was searching many years before the YouTube is worst thing who distracted people's in the name sacred phycology of human behaviour is compared to how to impress girl or how to read minds I knew that is just money earnings methods of fullish people's.but the main question is if I say where the roots grown from the minds,how a mind of a human agreed to existence of those things like vision or dreams if they are so how you believe them they are true.

Technical Wishes: FileExporter and FileImporter become default features on all Wikis
The FileExporter and FileImporter will become a default features on all wikis until August 7, 2020. They are planned to help you to move files from your local wiki to Wikimedia Commons easier while keeping all original file information (Description, Source, Date, Author, View History) intact. Additionally, the move is documented in the files view history. How does it work?

Step 1: If you are an auto-confirmed user, you will see a link "Move file to Wikimedia Commons" on the local file page.

Step 2: When you click on this link, the FileImporter checks if the file can in fact be moved to Wikimedia Commons. These checks are performed based on the wiki's configuration file which is created and maintained by each local wiki community.

Step 3: If the file is compatible with Wikimedia Commons, you will be taken to an import page, at which you can update or add information regarding the file, such as the description. You can also add the 'Now Commons' template to the file on the local wiki by clicking the corresponding check box in the import form. Admins can delete the file from the local wiki by enabling the corresponding checkbox. By clicking on the 'Import' button at the end of the page, the file is imported to Wikimedia Commons.

If you want to know more about the FileImporter extension or the Technical Wishes Project, follow the links. --For the Technical Wishes Team: Max Klemm (WMDE) 09:13, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

CC by 4.0 for uploaded files
Not sure if something has changed, but in uploading files recently, I noticed there was no CC by 4.0 option in the upload form - only CC by SA and GFDL. Looks like some previous discussion here: Colloquium/archives/September_2018. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 11:53, 6 August 2020 (UTC)


 * It looks like CC-BY 3.0 was removed in January 2018. I've added CC-BY 4.0 to MediaWiki:Licenses. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 14:25, 6 August 2020 (UTC)


 * You're amazing - what would we do without you? -- Jtneill - Talk - c 23:27, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Supporting robust, portable flash card data sets
One of the most useful resource sets we could provide specifically for foreign-language courses would be structured vocabulary data, tied to lessons, that could be easily exported from Wikiversity into platform-independent, open-source flash card software like Anki.

I've looked at the box-based flash cards that are being used on other projects around the site, and while they seem good enough for a few flashcards at the end of a chapter, they are not going to work for language learning, where you really want the kind of advanced features you get in dedicated flash card apps--not to mention the convenience of having an app on your phone rather than having to open Wikiversity several times a day for spaced repetition study.

Especially since there are some great open source apps out there already, it seems like the best solution is to give our users structured data to download and import into Anki or a similar app. I'm a comfortable wiki editor and have written my share of code for other purposes, but I've only created a few simple Lua scripts, and I don't know much about the MediaWiki software's innards.

My questions are:

1. I started by trying to create structured data on a sandbox page in the Data namespace here on Wikiversity, following the instructions in mediawikiwiki:Help:Tabular Data, but, unless I've fouled up somewhere, this kind of data parsing seems MediaWiki-specific. Is there any way to create that sort of structured data (not just a display table) here?

2. If not, is there any policy or technical reason why we couldn't keep vocabulary lists in tabular format on MediaWiki and use local Lua scripts to access and process that data?--e.g., can Lua take input from an interwiki link?

3. Is there any way to generate a text file download from a wiki page on-the-fly? For example, a button or link where the user can click to save a CSV/TSV file for importing into Anki? Anything a little more user-friendly than "Here's a CODE block, copy and paste it into a text editor"?

4. Are there any other flash card/vocabulary list projects that are underway/abandoned that I should look at instead of trying to reinvent the wheel?

--Chapka (discuss • contribs) 19:17, 16 August 2020 (UTC)


 * We don't have a Data: namespace. See Namespaces. That seems to be something specific to . It might also be replaced now by Wikidata. MediaWiki is for the software itself. Either Commons or Wikidata would be what you want. I suspect Wikidata is the way to go now. What I don't know is how you would manage user data, such as tracking which items a user has already seen, how long it took them to answer, etc. That might require JavaScript-specific client-side data. I'm not familiar with Anki, but I haven't seen any way to save text files. .txt is not a supported file format for uploads. There was a quiz project that was abandoned. Search to see if there's anything useful on flashcards or quizzes. Another option would be something like Openwords. I don't know anything about it, but it comes up as the first option for open source language software. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:34, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Tab doesn't change color when selected...
Portal:Irish/Cultural_Studies

When the other two tabs in the group are selected the background color changes to match the background of the tab.. This doesn't happen for the third tab, Why? ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 23:52, 16 August 2020 (UTC)


 * I can confirm that it doesn't work for me, either. I looked at it, but I don't see anything wrong with the page. Not sure what else to try, other than perhaps making a sandbox and seeing if you can replicate it or correct it in a different portal. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 17:48, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Unclosed paragraph...
WikiJournal_of_Science/Widgiemoolthalite and others, I've been through the various templates and still can't figue out WHY this has an unclosed paragraph.

Short of reverting the entirity of my cleanup efforts over the last few years entirely, it needs someone else (with more expertise when it comes to templates) to finally figure out why the set of overly complicate nested templates, this uses are misrendering.

Perhaps next time other Wikversity Contributors will consider actually writing UNDERSTANDABLE and DOCUMENTED template code, so that those contributors trying to maintain things aren't having to run around in circles trying to figure out precisely which single character or white space change they made, in some seemingly unrelated template or page edit caused misrenders or generated malformed HTML in the first place?

ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 17:58, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

I need to take a break... As is typically the case the fault condition was buried inside a called template's parser function. Still not obvious to a normal contributor, unless they knew to look for that situation specifically. ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 23:37, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you so much for this. I realise the templates have become pretty nested to avoid having too much complexity within the template itself. But I realise it ends up making it harder to check and contribute to. One thing that might be possible is I could start hiving off the formatting to a /styles.css subpage (the same way that w:Template:Intro_to) so that the actual template content is easier to read, but that cause its own editability barrier. Their complexity has been raised previously as a problem, though formatting the right-hand panel of as an infobox  still is quite complex at the source code level. A lot of that code complexity should hopefully be simplified once basic data is being straight imported from wikidata (example of a 'get authors' command that would negate the need for all the parts dealing with listing a variable number of |firstn and |lastn parameters). T.Shafee(Evo&#65120;Evo)talk 02:20, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The other suggestion, I would make is that a complex template like this might be candidate for a LUA support module or conversion to a LUA module, which has both advantages and disadvantages in terms of maintainability. LUA code is to some extent able to re process it's input data in ways that are less cumbersome than with conventional template markup, and to some extent code be if needed more dynamic. ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 08:27, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

WikiJournal of Medicine/Alternative layout2
Broken, beyond reasonable attempts to figure out WHY it's misrendering. Can someone please come up with an explanation or I will propose it's removed on the grounds of being unmaintainable. Perhaps next time, Wikiversity Contributors can write SIMPLE and DOCUMENTED templates that NORMAL contributors can actually understand in order to keep them maintained ? ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 19:36, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
 * As it typically is, it turns out the cause of the misrendering was deeply buried 2 levels down in an embedded template. But still not obvious to a normal contributor as to where to look for the fault. ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 23:36, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Two Broken Portals...
Sorry for the drastic approach, but I've proposed the following for speedy as broken and unmaintained Portal pages.
 * Portal:Medicine
 * Portal:Astronomy

Should there be someone that actually cares enough to retain these, fixing them would be preferable, but there seems to be a lack of interest in getting some parts of Wikiversity back to an acceptable standard.

If there isn't the time of inclination to fix things, then broken portals should be removed, to prevent the site looking bad and amateurish. ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 21:02, 18 August 2020 (UTC)


 * I support the idea, but let's give it some time to see if anyone wants to fix these vs. delete them. We typically use (as  ) in these situations. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 01:36, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Agree -- Jtneill - Talk - c 01:55, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Template simplification?
I recently "repaired" this, but I am thinking it could be simpler.

Template:Workshop for Australian education policy

Any suggestions? ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 10:32, 20 August 2020 (UTC)


 * My preference is for navigation sidebars, and they should be subpages, not templates. See, for example, IT Fundamentals/Sidebar. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:25, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Lint removal.
Okay so I am taking a short pause..

It would be nice if someone could review the 'fixes' I've made to ensure nothing serious broke in the process. Thanks ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 19:05, 20 August 2020 (UTC)


 * I've reviewed a few edits along the way. Everything seemed good from my perspective. Please continue when you're refreshed. Thanks! -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:52, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Important: maintenance operation on September 1st
Read this message in another language •  m:Special:MyLanguage/Tech/Server switch 2020

The Wikimedia Foundation will be testing its secondary data centre. This will make sure that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

They will switch all traffic to the secondary data centre on Tuesday, September 1st 2020.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop while the switch is made. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.


 * You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Tuesday, September 1st. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 19:30 IST, 07:00 PDT, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Wednesday September 2).
 * If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it.  If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal.  Then you should be able to save your edit.  But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:


 * Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
 * There will be code freezes for the week of September 1st, 2020. Non-essential code deployments will not happen.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. Please share this information with your community. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:49, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Free Learning List
https://freelearninglist.org/ —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:15, 27 August 2020 (UTC)