Wikinews:Water cooler/technical/archives/2018/October

The 'random article' link in the sidebar seems a bit useless for a news site...
...as unfortunately the current tools do not allow to limit it to "random page among 'last couple weeks' submissions". Is this correct?

Interestingly, people read and use the sidebar, as Excoriation helpfully pointed out.

Perhaps the 'random article' link needs to be removed from MediaWiki:Sidebar as this might cause confusion.

Thoughts? --Gryllida chat / how do YOU get started? 01:51, 2 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Our archives are a major asset of the project. (The next link after that in the navigation side-bar is an archive splash page that I've been working on upgrading for some time; it's been taking a back seat to other dialog-related upgrades.) I don't see a problem with it.  Most people probably won't even notice that link, those that do and take the name of the link literally won't be surprised by what it does, and those that are surprised will only be so for an instant.  Providing most-recent articles is a function of the main page, which is at the top of the navigation side-bar. --Pi zero (talk) 12:03, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Get a notification when any article status changes
I would like to receive a notification --through email or Echo, for example-- each time an article status changes - for any new article - for example this can be addition to develop or review or tasks.

I can watch a category, but this does not generate email notifications.

The gadgets --the action done when people click 'submit for review' in the develop tag, the ezPR gadget-- could do a ping in edit summary on opt-in basis. If it is via edit summary, a list of opted-in participants may need to be stored at a wiki page.

I am not sure what would be the best approach.

--Gryllida (chat) 04:44, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
 * You can subscribe to your watchlist thru RSS. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:27, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't know how (think via API, but I had difficulty finding documentation about where to put the watchlist token). --Gryllida (chat) 05:30, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Go to Special:Watchlist
 * View source (e.g. Ctrl+U if you are using Firefox)
 * Search for "atom" (e.g. Ctrl+F)
 * Find a string like: "w/api.php?action=feedwatchlist&allrev=1&wlowner=Gryllida&wltoken=[gibberish]&feedformat=atomz"
 * Add the feed "https://en.wikinews.org/w/api.php?action=feedwatchlist&allrev=1&wlowner=Gryllida&wltoken=[gibberish]&feedformat=atom" to your RSS reader.
 * Let me know if you need more help. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:37, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
 * This looks great. Thank you. Gryllida (chat) 05:50, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
 * This looks great. Thank you. Gryllida (chat) 05:50, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Edittools and MediaWiki:Edittools.js still need fixing
I raised an issue early this year about MediaWiki:Edittools and MediaWiki:Edittools.js possibly not working properly. There weren't enough replies here, so five months ago I decided to ask for help or suggestions at MediaWiki.org's Support Desk. I figured that the suggestions there are helpful, but I'm unsure. I wanted to file a Phabricator task about this, but I decide to raise this once more. --George Ho (talk) 08:48, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for following this up George Ho.
 * Why don't they fix it? Edit tools is a part of MediaWiki.
 * Does this bug not occur at Russian Wikinews or English Wikipedia?
 * If it does not parse our MediaWiki:Edittools then it is a bug in MW's code?
 * I do not follow what code needs fixing.
 * If you don't understand either then we can ask at the topic that you linked. --Gryllida (chat) 09:35, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I still don't understand codes much, even when using the "F12" key, i.e. developer tools. I tried finding flaws in Elements tab via Google Chrome, but I don't know which code needs fixing. I also couldn't detect "exceptions". --George Ho (talk) 09:51, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
 * OK thanks George Ho;
 * and maybe others; do you have suggestions different from 'this is a bug in MediaWiki which needs to be reported'? --Gryllida (chat) 10:41, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

"Opinions" tab not appearing while using debug=true in a browser's address bar
When I was using " " (e.g. this one) and developer tools, I noticed that "Opinions" tab is missing. On the other hand, without using " ", the "Opinions" tab appears. Also, when I used the developers tools (F12 key) via Google Chrome, I found one error message (or an "exception"?). --George Ho (talk) 10:04, 28 October 2018 (UTC)