RationalWiki:Technical support/Archive25

I made a big change to article, but filter tells that it's suspicious and doesn't let me publish it.
I just edited article about "argumentum ad populum", but it got marked as suspicious and filter doesn't let me publish it. I think that this edition can be helpful. What should I do?
 * Try making the edit as several shorter edits instead. Initial edits that make large changes to pages are generally viewed as suspicious. Bongolian (talk) 20:44, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
 * The fact that we have a filter completely preventing large contributions from new editors is ridiculous. Christopher (talk) 17:28, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I've made the filter less strict. If you try making the edit now it'll work, unless someone else reverts me. Christopher (talk) 17:32, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Math rendering errors
Although the $$ tag is now rendering formulas correctly with the upgrade, there is a problem when the tag appears on a page with the template. When the tag and the template both appear, calls to the tag only give an error message: '"`UNIQ--postMath-00000001-QINU`"' For example see Draft:Central Limit Theorem, which does not have the template and renders fine. Also see Standard deviation, which shows the error messages. Removing the template at the bottom of the page eliminates the error messages. Bongolian (talk) 19:44, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Should be fixed now. Apply ?action=purge to any affected pages. -- Tim Starling (talk) 09:04, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Looks good. Thanks!

New extensions
The following extensions were installed: CategoryTree, Description2, OpenGraphMeta, MultimediaViewer, TemplateStyles, Thanks, OATHAuth, Scribunto, CodeEditor. Also the skins MinervaNeue and Timeless.

These installations were all trivial, I didn't do any configuration. Looking through the previous discussion, I think MobileFrontend is the only extension left to do. As discussed, we have Description2 and OpenGraphMeta instead of WikiSEO. VisualEditor is complicated and controversial. -- Tim Starling (talk)
 * Looking sharp! Just a tiny problem... for some reason the left side of the Main Page is awkwardly positioned in the Timeless skin, and the colour is gone, and the right side seems to be randomly squished for certain articles which are displayed on the left (File:RationalWiki Timeless Skin.png). Any way to fix this? 05:22, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
 * If you go to the main page on Vector and add debug=true to the URL like so, then right click one of the coloured boxes and click "inspect" from the context menu, you can see all the CSS rules that apply and where they come from. For example "inspect" on the grey box might get you into a td or th, but if you go up to the enclosing table, there is a background property with selector .mp_left_inside. There is a source link which takes you to a specific position in a load.php response, then you can scroll up and see the comment "MediaWiki:Vector.css". That's a hint that the rule is in MediaWiki:Vector.css, which is specific to the Vector skin. If you want a rule to apply across all skins, it should be in MediaWiki:Common.css. -- Tim Starling (talk) 23:32, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Can minevra be default for mobile users? 2600:387:9:3:0:0:0:B3 (talk) 01:09, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Sure BoN, but that's MobileFrontend's job and it's probably going to take a couple of hours to set it up. -- Tim Starling (talk) 01:08, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

User:Inferno Bot
It seems to have broken shortly after the recent update (last edit was the 17th). Can someone look into this? Plutocow (talk) 00:43, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Yeah, taken care of. Needed to update the codebase. Next time please report issues with Inferno on my talkpage instead, that way I get notified immediately. -- Techpriest (talk) 20:28, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Template:Logfal doesn't work anymore
In Template:Logfal, all categories appear blank. It used to work before. - Linneris (talk) 12:09, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Should be fixed now. There was an argument in the template that might have been ignored in the previous Wiki version but that seemed to suppress non-funspace links in the current version. Bongolian (talk) 15:46, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks! - Linneris (talk) 17:47, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Actually, the old Template:Navbox specified the main namespace in a way that's no longer recognized. Several other templates using it, not only Template:Logfal, showed too few things (sometimes none). That's now fixed.
 * It used to be that adding a line for namespace Fun in a template like Template:Logfal made Fun selected in addition to Main, but after the wiki upgrade it became the only namespace instead. I first changed the templates using Template:Navbox, but after looking more closely I thought it was better to make that main template work like 04:58, 8 July 2022 (UTC)before instead, so I made that change too. But I thought there was no point undoing the smaller change to the other templates, since it makes no difference. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 19:29, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Blacklisting altox
A considerable part of the spam we've been facing for the last few days link to their site. I think we should blacklist their name. GeeJayK (talk) 17:56, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

DDoS?
Response has been sluggish for the past hour or so. Is there a DDoS going on? Bongolian (talk) 17:57, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Seems to be better now. Bongolian (talk) 18:29, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Currently having extreme sluggishness. Bongolian (talk) 05:03, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Same. I also got a 503 server error I think. LongStylus (talk) 05:08, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Magic links not working
It appears that magic links, such as the magic link to Special:BookSources attached to an ISBN, are not working since the latest upgrade. MediaWiki says that this is disabled by default after MW 1.28. Could this be enabled at your next maintenance time? —cosmikdebris talk stalk 14:11, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
 * The Special:BookSources link worked for me. I entered an ISBN and got valid links to websites for the ISBN. Bongolian (talk) 16:39, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Is it jsut me or did the spambots get more aggressive since June?
2600:387:9:3:0:0:0:4F (talk) 20:31, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Internal error on the 2018 Archives section from the Articles For Deletion page
Thought I'd report this. Arcadium Trancefer (talk) 17:27, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, this error is still happening (RationalWiki:Articles for deletion/Archive 2018). Other AfD archives do not give this error message. Bongolian (talk) 18:15, 28 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I fixed it. Apparently it was someone's signature that was causing the issue. Plutocow (talk) 19:13, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Board of Trustees election
Can someone start the voting process on this? It's pro forma since there are only 2 candidates, but it's been a month since campaigning officially ended. Bongolian (talk) 16:55, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Past practice has been to ping and ask him nicely to set up the poll. I don't see any need to bother him or Tim since there are only two candidates for two positions. Why not ask the mob to declare the vote closed? —cosmikdebris talk stalk 22:11, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I think last time it was pro forma people wanted to hold the vote anyways but I might be misremembering. 01:00, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
 * yeah, if there's two positions and two nominees then the election is finished and there's no reason to do makework with the server etc - David Gerard (talk) 14:13, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I can never remember how to change the system message. Can someone tell me how, or just remove the current message? Bongolian (talk) 17:24, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I'll take care of this. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 17:51, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I think I have all the relevant pages updated here. If I missed anything please let me know.
 * I also updated the foundation's web site. Since Oxy departed I am the only one who has permissions there. We should look for another volunteer or two to back me up there. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 19:06, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
 * What technical skills are required? Bongolian (talk) 21:22, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

Reverting vandalism on Southern Strategy identified as harmful?
A page on the wiki called "Southern Strategy" has been vandalized to say something like "I will beat you to pulp" multiple times, yet when I try to revert it it thinks that I'm harmful and trying to vandalize the page.
 * Probably a quirk of the edit filter tagging anything that removes a significant amount of characters on a page as vandalism. Plutocow (talk) 02:02, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Weird accounts
So, I checked the User Creation Log and it occured to me that recently alot of accounts starting with "Verona", "Svetl" & "Igor" were created. Just thought I'd let you know. They look suspicious to me (like something that the edit filter should pick up (accounts that get banned for being "blackhat SEO Spammers" or "Clear spam/bot accounts" (I think it's the latter one (bot accounts))). Arcadium Trancefer (talk) 09:57, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
 * The accounts don't actually seem to be doing any edits, so they're not obvious spam. Bongolian (talk) 15:31, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

Tried to create an AfD, need help?
I created this page: RationalWiki:Articles_for_deletion/Laird_Shaw. Not sure how to format/create it properly. BUFO (talk) 23:09, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I have fixed the formatting of the AfD for you. For future reference, see the 4-step instructions at the top of RationalWiki:Articles for deletion. Bongolian (talk) 04:21, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

How do I make a custom sig?
I want to make my sig say AlduinThe World Eater Wakes but I don't know how to make that connect to my talk page. Alduin (talk) 00:27, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
 * See: Help:Wikisig. Bongolian (talk) 00:58, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks. AlduinThe World Eater Wakes 01:10, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

MediaWiki 1.35
RationalWiki has been upgraded to MediaWiki 1.35. Please report any problems you see. -- Tim Starling (talk) 05:11, 12 June 2022 (UTC)


 * The voting system on the WIGOs is completely dysfunctional. And, the image cache is still a bit bonkered. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 05:19, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
 * The WIGO thing should be fixed in a minute. Please be more specific about the image cache. -- Tim Starling (talk) 05:28, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
 * The most obvious WIGO issue is fixed. Votes should update now. -- Tim Starling (talk) 05:34, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Before the upgrade, some image thumbnails weren't being generated, e.g. the information icon used in message boxes. This was still happening immediately following the upgrade, but appears to have fixed itself now. Thanks, —cosmikdebris talk stalk 16:07, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

The database server briefly ran out of space in its root partition because of a problem with the queries VandalBrake was using to determine the most recent deleted revision contributed by a user. So for now, I have commented out that feature. -- Tim Starling (talk) 05:51, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
 * The search box is not autocompleting. Maybe it's a problem with not having completed reindexing and will fix itself? Bongolian (talk) 07:29, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
 * ElasticSearch needs to be upgraded. -- Tim Starling (talk) 07:43, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I upgraded ElasticSearch, but it is still broken. Index updates are not working. The job runner seemed to be stuck in a loop in curl_multi. I think I will upgrade/rebuild the Apache server next, maybe that will fix it. The current server has libcurl 7.58 which is probably not well-tested against a relatively recent Elastic client library. I disabled search updates to unstick the job queue. -- Tim Starling (talk) 11:36, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I made a new MediaWiki server with Ubuntu 22.04 and PHP 7.4, and I'm running a search rebuild on it, as well as two job queue threads (necessary because search rebuild queues a lot of jobs). Maybe it's working. -- Tim Starling (talk) 10:45, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
 * This is fixed now. -- Tim Starling (talk) 11:02, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

I seemingly have the power to edit the edit filter. I won't try it out, but something needs to be fixed. Plutocow (talk) 08:18, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks Plutocow, this should be fixed now. Please review Special:ListGroupRights for any other incorrect permissions. -- Tim Starling (talk) 10:28, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Holy shit, Tim starling MVP. 14:49, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm getting blanks on all pages while running Firefox 100.0.2 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. Seems like a CSS or Javascript issue, because the page content appears for a split-second before disappearing, but it's still in the page source. Chromium 102.0 works fine (it's what I'm using to write this). 71.95.132.118 (talk) 16:31, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't know if it'll help at all to find the problem, but in the hope that it does, the website is working normally for me running Firefox 101.0.1 on Windows 11. 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒  talk  17:48, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm using Firefox 100.0.2 and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. RW is working fine for me. LongStylus (talk) 19:28, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Why are you only upgrading to 1.35 when 1.38 is available? Duncan from Teflpedia (talk) 11:39, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Stability reasons; 1.38 is not an LTS release. 1.35 is. 1.38s support ends fairly shortly after 1.39 comes out (the next LTS). By contrast, 1.35 is supported until the end of 2023. Anyway, thanks a lot Tim! -- Techpriest (talk) 19:26, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
 * That, and the fact that this upgrade has been in progress since 1.35 was current. Actually, since 1.34 was current. I had more than a week of work invested in migrating all the extensions and testing them against 1.35, as of a year ago. So it was a choice between completing the upgrade or starting over. Everything is in GitHub and the vast majority of the work required no special access to the servers, so if you feel like the time I'm putting in to this is not enough, you can always do it yourself. -- Tim Starling (talk) 23:55, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Tim! Bongolian (talk) 04:20, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Say "Thank you" nicely Scream!! (talk) 11:28, 14 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Thank you nicely. &mdash; Unsigned, by: Duncan from Teflpedia / talk / contribs

Can we have Page Previews enabled? It would make browsing more convenient. Daemonspudguy (talk) 03:06, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Some images seem to be displaying inconsistently. For example "File:Information icon.svg" when used in Template:Draft displays fine on some pages for me but not others. E.g., it fails to appear on Draft:Spinster.xyz, but appears on Draft:Statement; both pages have identical use of the Draft template. Bongolian (talk) 04:36, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I think that's my fault, I see what happened there. I'll wipe the parser cache so that those pages are re-rendered. -- Tim Starling (talk) 12:08, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
 * OK, looks good now. Bongolian (talk) 16:37, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Bout time that the UI improves. TranslationForAll (talk) 16:31, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Email notifications from the watchlist seem to have stopped or been delayed since about 10 hours ago. Bongolian (talk) 20:45, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
 * The notifications problem was fixed previously by David Gerard by manually running runJobs.php manually. Maybe this needs to be done again? Bongolian (talk) 18:57, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * The job queue on the old server (apache4) keeps getting stuck in curl. This was the problem I was having with search index updates, which I temporarily fixed by setting up a new server (apache5) with PHP 7.4 and running the job queue on that. Your original report possibly reflected broken outbound mail on apache5. But apache5 didn't have images and so was polluting the parser cache (per your report at 04:36), so I switched the job queue back to apache4. The next thing to do is to permanently migrate to apache5, including reattaching the images volume. This will require a brief period of downtime. -- Tim Starling (talk) 03:50, 18 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Can't access recent changes. Is it just me? Scream!! (talk) 22:44, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Got it but ...? Scream!! (talk) 22:46, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

The navigation box templates seem to have broken in the recent update, with them only displaying pages outside the mainspace. Plutocow (talk) 17:21, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

There's a mandatory migration pending for cache3, deadline is June 24, so I'll do that at the same time as switching the apache servers. The site will be down for a few minutes starting shortly. -- Tim Starling (talk) 03:58, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
 * When it came back up, the site was very slow due to CPU exhaustion on the new server (apache5). I checked the most obvious things but eventually resorted to resizing the instance to 4 CPUs, which took a surprisingly long time (8 minutes). Now we're up and looking OK, but I'll continue to look into why it's using so much CPU time. I think InstantCommons is at fault. -- Tim Starling (talk) 05:04, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

I was told by Trent that RW has to horizontally scale due to traffic. SimilarWeb shows this wiki gets nowhere near the anonymous traffic needed to horizontally scale (unless it ran on a potato) or require professional Mediawiki people to work on it. Seems the wiki would benefit from a basic tech team. But thanks Tim for upgrading and Trent for taking the initiative to do so, it works great Neiltyson1fan (talk) 18:38, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm very late to the party (nor have I seen it), but I'm still very happy that this long-overdue upgrade finally happened. Here's hoping that the next upgrade would be less chaotic, thanks again Trent! 00:32, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

A little configuration change remains needed, see, to unbreak pages like Contents that use heavier DPL calls than navigation generally does. I can't see the configuration, but I'm guessing it was always left at the default value, which would explain it. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 12:38, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

DPL error in Contents page.
In our RationalWiki:Contents page, the DynamicPageList extension is being called several times, and it shows the following error when the page tries to list pages from more than 4 categories. Extension:DynamicPageList (DPL), version 3.3.4: Error: Too many categories! Maximum: 4. Help: increase $wgDplSettings['maxCategoryCount'] to specify more categories or set $wgDplSettings['allowUnlimitedCategories'] = true; for no limitation. (Set the variable in the wiki's LocalSettings.php configuration file.) Is it possible for us to increase the 'maxCategoryCount' or set 'allowUnlimitedCategories' to true? Or would that blow up RatWiki servers or something? 05:31, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Such options also existed for the older DPL v2 extension used before the upgrade., there is a difference for the default settings: "allowUnlimitedCategories" was on by default in v2, but is off by default in v3. If it feels better to keep a limit nowadays, an alternative could be to double "maxCategoryCount" to 8, I think that would be enough for current and likely also future uses (but I'm not completely sure there's no monster DPL call on some weird page). --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 13:50, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I increased maxCategoryCount to 8, but then RationalWiki:Contents took 29 seconds to render, mostly waiting for the DB. You should consider deleting the page since it does pose a risk of downtime. -- Tim Starling (talk) 23:44, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Template:Listen
Is it possible to implement here the Template:Listen that exists on Wikipedia? Bongolian (talk) 02:31, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Vandal catcher not working properly
The vandal catcher (RationalWiki:Vandal catcher) is not working properly. It is reporting the full list of recent changes rather than just the changes that were not patrolled. It seems like the argument(s) to Special:RecentChanges are not recognized. Bongolian (talk) 07:19, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * It appears that the  parameter in   is broken.
 * I tracked down an issue in mediawiki that may have something to do with our problem, but investigating the issue requires console access to the server. Maybe can take a look as his schedule permits?
 * For the time being, you can set up a filter in Special:RecentChanges to hide patrolled edits like this, then bookmark that page. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 23:15, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

MathML rendering problem
Page [[Fun:Mathematical fallacies ]] is filled with error messages:
 *  Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle A=B} 

When I put large parts of the page between &lt;!-- and --> the remaining lines render correctly, but this seems only to depend on the number of commented out math expressions, not on which particular expression has been removed. Can someone with more experience with MathML take a look at this issue? 10:31, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I'll add to this, after playing with it a bit on my sandbox, that commenting out part of the proof that 1 = -1, I could get the error or properly displayed math just by repeatedly hitting the preview button, without actually changing any of the markup. 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒  talk  01:43, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Possible server errors on the Russian side of RW
Someone is reporting specific server error messages on the Russian RW. It might have something to do with the fixes that were addressed by David Gerard in March of this year (RationalWiki:Technical support/Archive24). Bongolian (talk) 19:13, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Yeah it was me. And if someone need help with translating bug report or testing or something I can help. We really need fix this errors, thnx. Who can do that? Holger (talk) 02:10, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Most likely, . Bongolian (talk) 02:20, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I'll have a look this evening - David Gerard (talk) 14:28, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
 * How it's going on? (We need working search on site to editing page references) Holger (talk) 15:23, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Page won't load

 * moved from Talk:Modern Science in the Bible —cosmikdebris talk stalk 02:39, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

for some reason the page isn't "working right now" 173.66.4.163 (talk) 02:21, 25 September 2022 (UTC)


 * I got a 500 error on this page, and did a couple of edits to see if I could snap it out. It's back now, but I got a "Error 503 Backend fetch failed...Guru Meditation: XID: 425538927" error on saving my latest change. A transitory error? Not sure what the source of this error is. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 02:39, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

worked for a while but it won't load again 173.66.4.163 (talk) 04:17, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

A minor annoyance
For whatever reason, Andrew Wommack still shows up in Special:DeadendPages. And a number of fork pages are still in Special:LonelyPages, in spite of User:Christopher/Not so lonely. Is there a reason they're not working? Plutocow (talk) 02:43, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

New MediaWiki LTS release
MediaWiki 1.39, the next LTS, will be released in November. Just letting the sysadmins know, you may want to upgrade   (though I guess the latter probably already knows). Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 14:49, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Add new permissions to the tech user group
Recently, I've had to edit sitewide CSS (see MediaWiki talk:Common.css). I couldn't edit it, but fortunately I was able to add myself to the default interface administrators user group. Looks like the permissions for this group were set back when editinterface allowed you to edit sitewide CSS, JS and JSON.

I request that the sysadmins add editsitecss, editsitejs and editsitejson to the permissions for the tech user group. Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 08:37, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Regex not working
So, in the edit filter, if I type in "P1UT0C0W", from what I understand it's supposed to cover "Plutocow", "Plut0c0w", "PIutocow", etc., and it was working like that for a while. Now, it seems like "P1UT0C0W" only covers, well, "P1UT0C0W", and allows any other combination to slip past (as I, and several vandals, have just demonstrated). I don't know if this is something that broke in the most recent MediaWiki update, but it seriously needs to be fixed.

Also, as a side note, it would be useful to be able to see deleted contributions in the "Examine Past Edits" feature. Plutocow (talk) 17:26, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Can't be MediaWiki, given that we haven't updated yet, the new LTS isn't out. Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 18:05, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
 * MediaWiki was last updated here on 12 June 2022. I'll check the filter hits from around that time, but that may have been when the filter stopped working like it did previously (I do remember seeing a number of accounts from the past few months that should have been prevented from registering by the filter). Plutocow (talk) 18:13, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The brackets and periods seem to be doing their job, so it's weird that the numerals aren't working. Regardless, I'll go over the filter to replace the numerals for now. Plutocow (talk) 00:58, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
 * That’s because 1 = L = I etc isn’t regex, it’s a seemingly wiki-specific thing called ccnorm. You need to specifically invoke it with the filter, but it does seem that to be broken even if you do. Christopher (talk) 01:03, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

RW loading times
Has anyone else experienced slow waiting times? My lag is insane. I think I might have to leave until it's resolved. Andrew5 (talk) 21:15, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Oh dear - please don't go my love. Acei9 21:35, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Sorry - I'm moody as fuck. Carry on. Acei9 21:51, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
 * It seems to be loading at a reasonable speed again. Andrew5 (talk) 22:58, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
 * RW loading times are sometimes a problem on my end as well, like just right now, as well as when Andrew left the comment. I'll leave a timestamp here in case the loading issues are related to certain times of the day. Plutocow (talk) 16:08, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
 * This seems to be a part of a more general problem that's been around ever since the last MediaWiki upgrade. This is number one on my list of discussion topics for the next Board of Trustees meeting. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 16:11, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Spambots
I've set filter 57 to block without warning for today, some spam network has been creating accounts all day and just carefully avoiding the block after the warning by editing different pages every time or just trying to spam their userpage once. Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 16:30, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Could we hide the newuser log from recent changes? It is pretty clear the bots are using IPv6, so blocking accounts to restrict the underlying IP's account creation does next to nothing, and it's not like anyone can really stop them without access to other tools. Eventually, those bots will get blocked by the edit filter, so it's not like they'll be able to pollute RW with nonsensical spam, but the constant account creation makes recent changes completely unreadable. I propose we create a new user right for the newuser log and assign it to *, so everyone can see it, but it won't be included in recent changes. Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 21:20, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I noticed earlier that we were getting bombed with spam accounts. Vee (talk) 21:21, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
 * It's been going on since 05:01 UTC (I think, based on the edit filter log), it's pretty insane. Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 21:24, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Pinging the sysadmins:, , Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 21:27, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't really want the user creation log to be hidden from RC, as it makes it possible to catch e.g. Mikey socks before they can do anything. If the spam account creation gets truly horrible, we can disable account creation for a short bit. Plutocow (talk) 21:45, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Plutocow is right. We get too many intentionally offensive usernames being created to make hiding new accounts a good idea. 21:48, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
 * There's a new account being made every 2 minutes. Disable account creation for a few days, fuck. ---Ozzyboo (talk) 21:51, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Using the edit filter to disable account creation is a (to my knowledge) unprecedented measure with potential to hit good-faith editors looking to edit the wiki without wanting to reveal their IPs. Compare that with just hiding the log from recent changes. I don't think this would make Mikemikev's life any easier. When he signs up to wandalize, while it is true he often uses obvious usernames, he sometimes doesn't. Doesn't make a difference anyway, as he doesn't take long to immediately reveal himself. Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 22:27, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

It's been done once before, to stop a TOR spammer or something like that I believe. Also, Momotaro was Gorilla lover/Kamen rider saber, not Mike. Plutocow (talk) 22:33, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Huh, so there's someone else that cares about mike other than himself. Doesn't really change anything for me, I still heavily dislike doing that kind of stuff. Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 22:34, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
 * So this is what we'll do every time an account spammer appears? Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 23:16, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I think this is a stopgap measure for a bad situation. This wasn't just the usual rate of spam accounts being created; we were literally being bombed with spam accounts so that it made monitoring recent changes a real pain in the ass. Vee (talk) 23:31, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I personally have not seen the spambots get this bad in my time here. This is an exceptional circumstance that needed an exceptional response. 23:32, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
 * If someone with a /64 block of IPv6 addresses (the most common setup) decides to mess around and run spambots against this site, they can force us to disable account creation as is. Disabling account creation and telling people to contact sysops is not useful, due to the sheer number of inactive sysops here, and that contacting them requires either already having an account with an email or writing on their talkpage, revealing to everyone your IP address (because you cannot create an account), and either the password of your new account (if you don't want to reveal your email, the sysop has to tell you the password somehow) or your email address (so that the server may auto-generate one and send it to that user's email). That's my biggest problem with this Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 23:38, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Should only be for a day or two, although I agree the "contact a sysop" bit doesn't make sense. 23:40, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
 * That's a day or two too much in my opinion. I won't delete that filter given that people here are in favor of using it as a temporary measure, but I'll be monitoring the filter log and disabling it the moment the bots give up. Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 23:47, 21 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Honestly, in the interest of opsec, I quietly implemented the filter as a temporary measure. The error message says to go to the tech support page, which I thought was sufficient. I'm not really liking the big ol' site banner to alert such usernames as "Voldemorecock", "Wh0rrey potter", and "Whоrrey potter" (who tried to create these accounts after I enabled the filter), or the dozens of spambots. I don't think anyone gives a shit except for Ken, the vulgar trolls, and spambots if we turn off account creation for a few hours. Cheers, —cosmikdebris talk stalk 23:45, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
 * You never know, a potential editor looking to fix a typo, or add some funny link, may be locked out by this, and move on and never think again of this site. That's how I started in the wiki!. Rabbitseatcarrots (talk) 23:52, 21 October 2022 (UTC)
 * This should be a temporary measure. We'll all be watching the logs to see if there's any decrease in abuse. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 23:58, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Server errors on the Russian side of RW
Someone is reporting specific server error messages on the Russian RW. It might have something to do with the fixes that were addressed by David Gerard in March of this year (RationalWiki:Technical support/Archive24). Bongolian (talk) 19:13, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Yeah it was me. And if someone need help with translating bug report or testing or something I can help. We really need fix this errors, thnx. Who can do that? Holger (talk) 02:10, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Most likely, . Bongolian (talk) 02:20, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I'll have a look this evening - David Gerard (talk) 14:28, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
 * How it's going on? (We need working search on site to editing page references) Holger (talk) 15:23, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Dear we still have all of this problems :) Holger (talk) 04:24, 24 October 2022 (UTC)
 * May be somebody else can help,, , ? I feel intrusive, but I also feel helpless. Holger (talk) 12:25, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Constant onslaught of spam accounts
Is there any way to prevent the spammer from creating constant alt accounts? It seems like a username filter would be in order, although they seem fairly creative. Currently their behavior seems to consist of either mass account floods or editing using proxies/Tor and utilizing CSS fuckery. SwampFox (talk) 06:09, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
 * The only solution is blocking account creation for a few minutes, as autoblock doesn't stop Tor nodes from creating accounts. Preemptively blocking a few potentially problematic Tor ranges could potentially work, but would require a vote. Overall, currently our filter is the main option against the account spammers. Plutocow (talk) 14:59, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Confirmation email
I can't seem to receive the confirmation mail for confirming my e-mail address. I have waited and tried resending it a couple of times throughout the past week and a half, checked that I wrote the address correctly and checked again and it's in order. The mail also didn't get caught in spam, I checked junk mail. Does anyone have any idea what may be wrong, or any tech who could help out? Thanks Christopher for kindly pointing me here by the way.ConverginglyRational (talk)
 * No problem
 * You seem to be experiencing quite a specific issue. I just entered an address on a sock account (the same email I use for my main) and the confirmation email was sent in seconds, so it’s not that the whole system is broken. Christopher (talk) 14:54, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for checking, I don't know exactly what the problem was, but I just tried it with another gmail address that I'll be using for this now then and now it worked no problem. So it's all in order now.ConverginglyRational (talk) 15:19, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Archive bug
Something seems to be failing with the Template:Talkpage. On the Talk:Haggard's Law page, there are no archives listed, but one exists in the usual place (Talk:Haggard's Law/Archive1), and the Talkpage template has no special parameters that it would be expected elsewhere. The "new" link recognizes the existing archive. Bongolian (talk) 01:18, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
 * It looks like the problem occurs on pages that contain an apostrophe in the name. I tried inserting on the Talk:Roko's basilisk page and it has the same problem. Bongolian (talk) 05:18, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
 * This is a longstanding issue. Christopher (talk) 11:39, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I have fixed the problem with those pages that I could easily find that have a talk page archive and have an apostrophe in the name. I used as a template the workaround that was present on Talk:Roko's basilisk. I searched through Category:Eponymous laws and RationalWiki:Technical support/Archive21. Bongolian (talk) 03:53, 7 February 2023 (UTC) Also Category:Logic. Bongolian (talk) 08:12, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Page still won't load
Modern Science in the Bible still won't load properly 2600:4040:475E:F600:FDAF:CC06:F30B:CE04 (talk) 03:24, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Even earlier versions won't load, but there's an archived version from March of this year that can be read. Bongolian (talk) 03:39, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Deleting and restoring the page seems to have fixed the issue. Christopher (talk) 11:49, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
 * The issue has returned. Should we take it out of rotation for display on the main page in the meantime? Christopher (talk) 23:21, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Might have something to do with the $$ tags. They don't work properly on other pages, displaying an error message (see above). You don't get the error message on this page, the equations display normally. Christopher (talk) 23:37, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
 * This appears to be it. Compare loading times for a copy of the article before and after nowiki-ing all math tags, if the before even loads at all. Christopher (talk) 23:52, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Vote buttons don't work
The vote buttons don't seem to work on the To Do List page. Arcadium Trancefer (talk) 14:27, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
 * They work fine for me. Christopher (talk) 15:28, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Attempted to create article, kept getting blocked by edit filter
I tried to create the following article but the edit filter blocked me and said I’d triggered the “Blackhat SEO Spammer” filter, whatever that is.

The article would have been titled XYZ, and the text would have been:

Xyz.com.au is an Australian neo-Nazi website with a trollish tone very similar to The Daily Stormer, having headlines like “Argentina’s Aryan Super Soldiers Beat Negroes In World Cup Final”.

Perhaps the most insidious thing about XYZ is that, unlike most hate sites, its domain name is relatively innocuous and gives no hint about what the site is actually like. So, in theory, a person could click on a link to XYZ and not know what they were getting into, thinking it was perhaps a legitimate news site.

XYZ was the subject of an academic paper published in 2021.

Not to be confused with “eXamine Your Zipper”. Although the thought of Nazis who always have their flies undone is kind of funny, in a twisted sort of way.

Search failure
Autocomplete does not work on searches, and I'm currently getting a search failure message for searches on pages that don't exist. The message is, "An error has occurred while searching: We could not complete your search due to a temporary problem. Please try again later." No list of pages with partial matches is returned, as was the case previously. Bongolian (talk) 18:44, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Have the same problem, though I was the only one /-The brick wall (talk) 19:37, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
 * That makes three of us. Ray of Sunshine (talk) 20:00, 13 January 2023 (UTC)


 * search1 rebooted earlier, and service elasticsearch didn't auto-start. I started it and I'm getting search results now! - David Gerard (talk) 22:07, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
 * also set it to auto-start on boot (systemctl enable) - David Gerard (talk) 22:46, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Looks good, thanks! Bongolian (talk) 00:32, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

PNG image rendering failure
There seems to be a general problem with PNG image rendering failing, perhaps related to the failure noted above. The was the case with File:PiZZa2.png for example, which appeared on the Pizzagate page until I replaced it with a JPG equivalent. Bongolian (talk) 08:22, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Internal error trying to access talk page of Websites/Internet
I'm getting the following error trying to access Rationalwiki_talk:Webshites/Internet:

[A string of numbers appears here, changes when reloading the page] /wiki/RationalWiki_talk:Webshites/Internet Error from line 33 of /srv/rw_common/extensions/RationalWiki/Expand.php: Cannot access private property Parser::$mOutputType

Backtrace:


 * 1) 0 /srv/rw_common/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3340): MediaWiki\Extension\RationalWiki\efExpand_Render
 * 2) 1 /srv/rw_common/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3047): Parser->callParserFunction
 * 3) 2 /srv/rw_common/core/includes/parser/PPFrame_Hash.php(263): Parser->braceSubstitution
 * 4) 3 /srv/rw_common/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(2887): PPFrame_Hash->expand
 * 5) 4 /srv/rw_common/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(1556): Parser->replaceVariables
 * 6) 5 /srv/rw_common/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(651): Parser->internalParse
 * 7) 6 /srv/rw_common/core/includes/content/WikitextContent.php(374): Parser->parse
 * 8) 7 /srv/rw_common/core/includes/content/AbstractContent.php(590): WikitextContent->fillParserOutput
 * 9) 8 /srv/rw_common/core/includes/Revision/RenderedRevision.php(263): AbstractContent->getParserOutput
 * 10) 9 /srv/rw_common/core/includes/Revision/RenderedRevision.php(235): MediaWiki\Revision\RenderedRevision->getSlotParserOutputUncached
 * 11) 10 /srv/rw_common/core/includes/Revision/RevisionRenderer.php(215): MediaWiki\Revision\RenderedRevision->getSlotParserOutput
 * 12) 11 /srv/rw_common/core/includes/Revision/RevisionRenderer.php(152): MediaWiki\Revision\RevisionRenderer->combineSlotOutput
 * 13) 12 [internal function]: MediaWiki\Revision\RevisionRenderer->MediaWiki\Revision\{closure}
 * 14) 13 /srv/rw_common/core/includes/Revision/RenderedRevision.php(197): call_user_func
 * 15) 14 /srv/rw_common/core/includes/poolcounter/PoolWorkArticleView.php(216): MediaWiki\Revision\RenderedRevision->getRevisionParserOutput
 * 16) 15 /srv/rw_common/core/includes/poolcounter/PoolCounterWork.php(162): PoolWorkArticleView->doWork
 * 17) 16 /srv/rw_common/core/includes/page/Article.php(810): PoolCounterWork->execute
 * 18) 17 /srv/rw_common/core/includes/actions/ViewAction.php(80): Article->view
 * 19) 18 /srv/rw_common/core/includes/MediaWiki.php(532): ViewAction->show
 * 20) 19 /srv/rw_common/core/includes/MediaWiki.php(313): MediaWiki->performAction
 * 21) 20 /srv/rw_common/core/includes/MediaWiki.php(945): MediaWiki->performRequest
 * 22) 21 /srv/rw_common/core/includes/MediaWiki.php(548): MediaWiki->main
 * 23) 22 /srv/rw_common/core/index.php(53): MediaWiki->run
 * 24) 23 /srv/rw_common/core/index.php(46): wfIndexMain
 * 25) 24 /srv/rw_common/config/wrapper.php(17): require(string)
 * 26) 25 {main}

Valeria22 (talk) 03:14, 31 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Fixed. A user's custom signature from 2018 had an  directive in it that smashed the current version of MediaWiki running on RW. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 19:32, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

getting blocked by the harmful action filter after modifying the article. help?
attempted to change the page https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/False_consciousness due to a lot of problems with the article (overly critical of a very reasonable concept) but i keep getting blocked by the harmful action filter because i deleted a lot of things from the article. help?


 * I looked at the abuse logs, and it appears that you were attempting to do exactly what the filter description says it is trying to prevent, that is, a large, suspicious change to an article by an anonymous user (more specifically, whitewashing and wholescale deletion of content). I suggest you discuss your proposed changes on the article's talk page before attempting to delete massive amounts of content from the article again. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 17:41, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Hello I'm new here and i've noticed a lot of pages are locked
I just signed up today(8pm-EST-ish April 5 2023) and I happened to notice a lot of locked pages. I've tried to edit the front page to get rid of large blank space and i've tried to add a few more things on the KiwiFarms page. I think wisdom of the crowd should work fine but i dont know much about the landscape here so i'm just asking out of curiosity.
 * —cosmikdebris talk stalk 00:26, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Blindroses (talk) 00:27, 6 April 2023 (UTC) Blindroses (talk) 00:28, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
 * There's no reason why you should be editing the main (front) page right off the bat. The KiwiFarms page has been subject to a lot of vandalism, hence the lock. Once you've been editing less controversial pages in a more-or-less sane manner, you will likely get the privileges to edit such pages. Bongolian (talk) 00:44, 6 April 2023 (UTC)