Wikivoyage talk:Bug reports and feature requests

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Streamlining bug reports[edit]

I'd really like to see our bug reports and feature requests streamlined a bit. I have a couple of thoughts:

  1. I could install a bug-tracking system like Bugzilla (popular but bletcherous UI), Mantis (not so popular but nice UI), or others TBD. This would give the "right" kind of interface, but it would require an additional login step for users.
  2. We could put one bug per page, and have Project:Bug reports just link to each page. This would organize them better, but leave things more flexible.
  3. We could use a template for a bug report, to organize the bug pages.
  4. Bug report pages could be sub-pages of Project:Bug reports, or even in their own namespace (like [[Bug:NumberOfArticles broken in pl:]].
  5. We could use the Inputbox extension to make adding new bug reports and feature requests easier.

Comments? Ideas? Suggestions? --(WT-en) Evan 10:18, 27 April 2006 (EDT)

I'd suggest going whole hog and setting up Mantis, which is fairly nice and has all the prioritization/status etc filtering which is critical to sorting out the wheat from the chaff. (Scarab is also OK, but the query functionality and whole stupid 'module' thing never works the way you expect.) Wikipedia also uses Bugzilla, but as you say the interface is craptastic. (WT-en) Jpatokal 10:44, 27 April 2006 (EDT)

Weird interlanguage links[edit]

The links to the inaccessible pages reported on Project:Bug_reports#Inaccessible_pages are messing the interlanguage bar. I understand that those pages (at least those on the then pseudo-domain pt:) now lead directly to the actual pages on the language versions. Can we say the bug has been solved? (WT-en) Ricardo (Rmx) 22:48, 30 April 2006 (EDT)

I seem to be blocked from editing[edit]

Swept in from the pub

Hi all, Please someone check if I have been blocked from editing either intentionally or by accident. I have been unable to log on and have not been able to edit for a week. I have had no notification of a problem, and IB have not been forthcoming on why I get gateway timeouts for attempts to edit or connect to non-article pages. My service provider promised to check if they are the problem but have not come back to me. This is seriously frustrating and annoying, as I have a lot of updates waiting to upload. I dont even expect this message to go through, but it is all I can do. Cheers, User:Pbsouthwood

If you can't log on at all, it's not a block (nor is there one on your account). You'll have to define "unable to log on" more precisely -- do you get an error message of any kind? Or is it just a timeout, or no response, or what? (WT-en) LtPowers 10:13, 6 August 2011 (EDT)
My IP address was blocked once by IB, but I was unable to even browse the site when that happened - emailing tech at wikivoyage.org (several times) and giving them my IP address and a description of the problem eventually got it resolved. Also, be aware that site functionality for many users has currently degraded to the point where edits take numerous attempts - I'm finding I generally have to reload pages several times due to timeouts - so that may also be part of the problem. As LtPowers said, if you can provide any additional info it might make it easier to figure out the issue, and if you can't access the site then any of the admins here can probably act as an intermediary for you via email. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 12:19, 6 August 2011 (EDT)
I am editing from a friend's house for this edit, and I had absolutely no problem at all, very quick connection and everything seems to work as expected. I don't know who his ISP is though as it is a local network service. Anyway to get to the questions: Not able to log on means if I click the Log on/create account tab I get a timeout. The only error message I get is 504 gateway timeout. and I get that for most non article pages, and all edit attempts in the last few days. I have not been able to get into shared at all recently, but the problems at En have been more gradual in buildup, which doesn't make sense to me at all. I have mailed the tech guy at IB (IBDick, I think he calls himself), but he has not so far managed to explain what the problem is or solve it. I have found out that the server refuses tracert requests as a policy, so that test didn't prove anything. I have been having the same trouble Ryan describes for months already. I have been unable to get onto anyone's talk page to leave a message or I would have done that already., and I don't have anyone's private email to bypass the problem. Its been a sort of "you cant get there from here" situation. I plan to try dial-up tomorrow if I get the time. that may also throw some light on the problem. Another friend accessed WT and could make edits using the same ISP that I use, so that doesn't look like the problem either, though the tech I spoke to at Telkomsa (my ISP) said he would get back to me after making some tests. me but did not. So it goes. If anyone wants to contact me by direct email, my address is on my user page. Cheers, • • • (WT-en) Peter (Southwood) Talk 12:51, 6 August 2011 (EDT)
I am also finding it is near impossible to load pages, preview or resolve an edit at this time, very frustrating. -- (WT-en) felix 12:09, 7 August 2011 (EDT)

I have made some small adjustments (set DNS to a more local branch) recommended by my ISP tech who thought they would solve the problem, but things have only improved marginally. I am now sometimes able to open an edit page. Perhaps 1 in 5 tries will open, and some of those will save, but still no success at all with shared. Cheers, • • • (WT-en) Peter (Southwood) Talk 11:42, 8 August 2011 (EDT)

You could try setting your DNS servers to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 (Google's open DNS servers) ...
I am also current experiencing serious access issues. It is no longer just the problem of frequent mind numbing lags and time outs I have experienced for the last year or so.That problem comes and goes, at times making editing a considerable challenge, other times only requiring backing up and re-loading the page or page edit a few times. This is why I occasional show two sequential identical edits, or sometimes go-offline leaving an unresolved edit sequence. The current problem however appears quite different. I have not been able to load any Wikivoyage page for an extended time since my last edit at 10:07, 14 August 2011. I use Safari for mac and Firefox for mac and of course tried both browsers multiple times and flushed the caches. Just prior to uploading this note I did manage to successfully load WT recent changes and the WT main page, then it went back to the error message again. I can however consistently load pages using a different IP (by proxy). As I can log in from a different IP, using the same browser/s I assume the IP is being blocked, albeit now intermittently. The error messages are presented as follows. Just prior to posting this using a mirror proxy I started getting successful page loads again using my regular. The messages below are the error message displayed on failed attempts, the error message is the same in both browsers:
The requested URL could not be retrieved
While trying to retrieve the URL: http://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?
The following error was encountered:
• Zero Sized Reply
Squid did not receive any data for this request.
Your cache administrator is root.
Generated Sun, 14 Aug 2011 17:32:44 GMT by wikivoyage.org (squid/2.6.STABLE6)
ERROR
The requested URL could not be retrieved
While trying to retrieve the URL: http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges
The following error was encountered:
• Zero Sized Reply
Squid did not receive any data for this request.
Your cache administrator is root.
Generated Sun, 14 Aug 2011 21:04:20 GMT by wikivoyage.org (squid/2.6.STABLE6)
Except for the date stamp the message is the same each time.
I hope the IB people are currently paying some attention to this page. Although I have been experiencing erratic page loads, occasional timeouts and other frustrations up to a few hours ago they were in the normal range of lousy server response to which I am accustomed, this latest issue is however an entirely new phenomena. To me it looks like a classic data base overload problem and most likely the Squid response is arising from giving up waiting for Apache to respond after a set period of time, most likely due to DB structural problems, possibly the /temp folder or memory cache or a load balancing issue. I am really quite sick of having my time wasted by persistent re-loading requirements and time-outs when editing here. What I find odd though is that whilst experiencing this problem I could come in through a different IP and access the WT server at the time without any issues. I am assuming therefore that the problematic server I was accessing from my own IP was the issue and the other (proxy) IP I was using was accessing a different server (or an unaffected mirror server). This latest event is further underlining my suspicions that IB need to do some serious housekeeping, really how old is the gear these guys are using, have they purloined the stuff from a museum collection somewhere. Maybe others here have some ideas on this. To add some clarity to the matter I could not get in from an Indonesian IP but could get in from a Dutch IP. -- (WT-en) felix 18:36, 14 August 2011 (EDT)
I don't know if anyone from IB followed up with Peter after the emails that went out. In any rate, I left a message at our current IB liaison's talk page current IB liaison's talk page. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 00:05, 15 August 2011 (EDT)
Thanks Peter, I get "User account "IBobi" is not registered." when I go to that commons.wikimedia.org address. I manage to load this page OK today so maybe that particular server issue was transient. Hopefully though IB can see there are (ongoing) problems that really do need to be addressed. -- (WT-en) felix 04:40, 15 August 2011 (EDT)
I guess Peter meant to link IBobi's Shared talk page but linked to Commons instead, apperantly out of a mistake.
On another note, I've got the very same message Felix explained above yesterday night, around midnight GMT, and gave up but now I seem to be accessing and editing seamlessly. The details on the problem and how to get around it are far too technical for me, though. – (WT-en) Vidimian 06:59, 15 August 2011 (EDT)
For what it's worth, I'm seeing the same behavior intermittently. I emailed tech at wikivoyage dot org with a screenshot last night, but I'm not optimistic about a response. At this point I would lay odds that the database is in need of standard TLC, but who knows if that will ever happen. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 10:36, 15 August 2011 (EDT)
Hi -- I pinged Dick on this just to be on the safe side. Hopefully he'll be able to take a look at this over the next few days. In the future, you can contact me via my posted email address, or Dick/Tech as you see fit.--(WT-en) IBobi 16:16, 15 August 2011 (EDT)
Hi (WT-en) IBobi, from my perspective today things seem to be back to their old cluncky ways again with no more squid ink blackouts. Thanks for your note above. -- (WT-en) felix 06:58, 16 August 2011 (EDT)
I was now able to log in again, but have been experiencing the same problems over the past few days, including earlier this evening. It seems the troubles come and go, sometimes not allowing me to do anything (including logging in or seeing recent changes, which gives me the same "Zero Sized Reply"), at other times I can see recent pages but still not log in or edit. In any case, it's working now but was still broken a few hours ago so I'm not sure it's fixed. (WT-en) Justme 19:06, 17 August 2011 (EDT)
Back to extended periods of failed page loads, failed edit uploads or zero server responses, happening again yesterday thru early this morning, working OK at this moment. -- (WT-en) felix 12:28, 18 August 2011 (EDT)

So I understand this, the error that led to this thread has been resolved and we are "back to the usual site sluggishness"? If this is a bug that needs to be addressed, please report it here: http://shared.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Top_bugs --(WT-en) IBobi 14:01, 23 August 2011 (EDT)

Sometimes page request times are good however for a lot of the time timeouts and slow page loads are a very disappointing aspect of editing on this site. Edits are occasionally lost in the muddle of it or alternatively require lots of back paging to retrieve, this is also frustrating as loading those pages is difficult as well. I often find the site unusable for hours at a time and on many occasions these problems have persisted for days or even weeks. Maybe there are conflicts with my ISPs caches, maybe it is a dysfunctional mirror server. It seems we do not all suffer from the same problem at the same time. Just incase it should be of interest I do check using a different computer and I have alternative browsers installed. I use only up to date OS and browser versions. Thanks for taking and interest iBobi. -- cheers (WT-en) felix 18:09, 23 August 2011 (EDT)
Hey felix, looks like rather than your being blocked, this is a symptom of an overall site issue that we will be working to resolve as we upgrade Mediawiki and address existing tech requests and bugs. Hang in there, because the site is going to be in better shape over the next couple of months.--(WT-en) IBobi 19:24, 23 August 2011 (EDT)
I have not suggested that I am being blocked, it appears to be bad server behaviour or related issues, good to hear that there is something being done to address the problems.-- cheers (WT-en) felix 20:00, 24 August 2011 (EDT)

Preferences Reseting?[edit]

Swept in from the pub

Last week my user preferences for recent changes and date format reset. Today the same thing happened again, and my editor preferences also changed. Has anyone else seen anything similar? If my account has been hacked that seems like an odd thing for someone to change, so I think it's more likely that something is amiss with the Wikivoyage servers. -- (WT-en) wrh2 12:20, 5 October 2011 (EDT)

Exactly the same happened to me, twice.--(WT-en) burmesedays 20:25, 5 October 2011 (EDT)
Thanks, good to know I don't have to worry about whether my account was hacked. My snarkier side would say something about reporting this as a bug on shared: if I thought there was better than a one-in-fifty chance of anything being done, but luckily that side of my personality is kept in check. -- (WT-en) wrh2 22:12, 5 October 2011 (EDT)
If you make the report and put in as many details of exact behavior as your can (include your browser type & version), I'll raise it with Tech. Please ping me on my page or via email at paul.obrien at internetbrands dot com when you've done this, okay?--(WT-en) IBobi 15:21, 6 October 2011 (EDT)
While your efforts have definitely resulted in more responsiveness, there are still a ton of high priority open bugs, including the longstanding performance problems. Given that reality, reporting an issue with user preferences that is impossible to reproduce reliably is probably not a good use of either of our available resources right now. -- (WT-en) wrh2 15:40, 6 October 2011 (EDT)
Yes and no. A number of those bugs will hopefully resolve when the Mediawiki upgrade is done, which is currently being specced out. If the preference resets are something we can resolve in the meantime, it's probably worth reporting. If we cannot reproduce the error, it is of course less likely we can address it.--(WT-en) IBobi 18:11, 7 October 2011 (EDT)
I can image "speccing out" would take two or three days or even a week, but 3 months and no end in sight? It's getting pretty ridiculous. What is wrong with your tech people? (WT-en) texugo 00:30, 8 October 2011 (EDT)
Chances are they've never worked with MediaWiki before. (WT-en) LtPowers 09:42, 8 October 2011 (EDT)
My preferences decided to reset themselves again today.~~
Really sick of having to reset my preferences every time I login. Since when does "speccing out" a project, involve breaking what is already running? Wikivoyage sucks at the moment. --(WT-en) Inas 17:06, 9 November 2011 (EST)

Search broken?[edit]

Swept in from the pub

The last couple of days, I've noticed that the search isn't working properly. If you search for a page (clicking Search, rather than Go), you get a message that says

There was a problem with the wiki search. This is probably temporary; try again in a few moments, or you can search the wiki through an external search service:

followed by a Google search box. It happens even if you search for a page we definitely have, like New York City. It seems to be happening only here on en: as far as I can tell, and I have no idea how long it's been going on. Anyone else noticed this? (WT-en) texugo 01:48, 6 October 2011 (EDT)

Yeah, I remember seeing that even on Wikipedia years ago. Looks like our search engine is down. Time for a bug report. (WT-en) LtPowers 09:57, 6 October 2011 (EDT)
Working for me. Anyone still having problems?--(WT-en) IBobi 15:15, 6 October 2011 (EDT)
Typing "New York" in the search box and clicking the "search" button takes me to the error page (WT-en) texugo mentions. -- (WT-en) wrh2 15:43, 6 October 2011 (EDT)
Still broken for me too. (WT-en) IBobi, are you clicking the "Search" button? The "Go" button works fine (if we have the page), but the Search button doesn't. (WT-en) texugo 23:27, 6 October 2011 (EDT)
I see it. I'll get tech on it & keep you updated. Thanks guys.--(WT-en) IBobi 17:37, 7 October 2011 (EDT)
Should be okay now. Let me know if you see this again.--(WT-en) IBobi 17:46, 7 October 2011 (EDT)
No change as far as I can tell. Every search takes me to the error page with the google search box. (WT-en) texugo 00:27, 8 October 2011 (EDT)
This worked for me shortly after IBobi posted his message, but it is broken again now. -- (WT-en) wrh2 01:02, 8 October 2011 (EDT)

Looking back into this to 1. Fix it, and 2. Figure out why it keeps breaking.--(WT-en) IBobi 14:22, 10 October 2011 (EDT)

Back up now, and being monitored to determine what the longterm issue is with stability.--(WT-en) IBobi 14:41, 10 October 2011 (EDT)

Special:Import[edit]

Swept in from the pub

Special:Import gives me "No transwiki import sources have been defined and direct history uploads are disabled." How do we change this? I want to upload important policy and policy talk pages from wts that I saved. --Peter Talk 22:45, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think that you have to ask at bugzilla:. --Stefan2 (talk) 22:48, 21 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes that's right, if you create a bug in the "Site requests" component, or just follow this link, you should be able to add the wikis that you wish to import from. Which wikis did you have in mind? Thehelpfulone 20:25, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Have done this here [1]. --Peter Talk 16:55, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Cached "Maintenance reports"[edit]

Swept in from the pub

Several of the Maintenance reports on Special:SpecialPages are showing older cached data. Has the updating of the reports been turned off or are they being updated on a schedule? I apologize if I missed a discussion on this. - Xltel (talk) 16:27, 24 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

<-- --[edit]

Swept in from the pub

Template:IsPartOf appears to have a problem. The template is invisible if you look at the page in the usual way in a web browser, but if you use the PDF option ("Print/export: Download as PDF" from the left menu), then the template displays at "<-- --". Something isn't working properly. Does anyone know what the error is? --Stefan2 (talk) 02:42, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

HTML comment which wasn't closed properly in the template itself? {{isIn}} was correct, but isPartOf and Dans (fr:) both had the error. K7L (talk) 03:38, 27 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Make bug reports where?[edit]

Swept in from the pub

Prices aren't showing up in "do" templated listings but when I tried to report this at Wikivoyage:Bug reports I get a soft re-direct to a non-existent page. -- Alice✉ 06:18, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

If it's a software issue, that would be at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org. --Rschen7754 06:27, 9 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It's "price" not "prices"; the extension is not at fault this time. If the bug reports page doesn't mention Bugzilla, perhaps it should be changed to match the "report a bug" in the sitenotice? K7L (talk) 07:31, 9 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Too late - what a ninny I am, I've just reported it as Bug 42891! -- Alice✉ 07:43, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Destinations of the month icon glitch[edit]

Swept in from the pub

Hi. I picked the Paris article at random, and on Ubuntu Firefox 17 and Chromium-browser both show a red Prev... link near the top right next to its coordinates.

The div "dotm_icon" has a div inside it which links to the missing icon File:Favicon yellow-black.svg: 

 <a title="File:Favicon yellow-black.svg" class="new" href="/w/index.php?title=Special:Upload&wpDestFile=Favicon yellow-black.svg">
    Previous destination of the month</a>

This image exists at http://en.wikivoyage-old.org/wiki/File:Favicon yellow-black.svg with a {{move}} tag to move it to Commons. Maybe that yellow 'v' checkmark icon won't be meaningful as the wikivoyage icon evolves. -- Skierpage (talk) 21:14, 10 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I missed the #DotM and OtBP icons section -- Skierpage (talk) 21:22, 10 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Recent changes not displaying new edits[edit]

Swept in from the pub

This may be a time-sensitive issue that will be fixed by the time some of you read this, but right now (5:40AM UTC, 11 Dec) recent edits aren't displaying at Special:Recent changes, my watchlist, my contributions, or on the "View History" page of pages I've just edited (although the changes have been made and are displayed in the page). The last edit displayed in recent edits is (My time is set to U.S. EST...UTC-5...so it was made at 4:27AM UTC 11 Dec):

  • (Upload log); 23:27 . . This, that and the other (Talk | contribs) uploaded "File:Azadi1.jpg" ‎(Transferred from wts.wikivoyage-old.org: see original upload log above)

There's also a line in the "Recent changes options" box right below "Show/hide minor edits | Show/hide bots..." that reads "Show new changes starting from 00:32, 11 December 2012" (Again, time is UTC-5) which can be clicked, although no changes are displayed (but the options, sidebar, etc load) when clicked.

Over on my watchlist, the following line is displayed below the "Mark all pages visited" button: Below are the last 250 changes in the last 168 hours, as of 11 December 2012, 00:42. (5:42AM UTC, 11 Dec). While the most recent edit displayed was made at 23:00 10 Dec (4:00 UTC, 11 Dec), despite the fact that I have just edited a couple pages and the page is set to display my edits in the watchlist. What's going on? AHeneen (talk) 05:56, 11 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The database servers are currently experiencing abnormally high lag, and are in the process of catching up right now.--Jasper Deng (talk) 05:58, 11 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

New Roadmap?[edit]

Much to my delight, almost all of our outstanding feature requests (and bugs, naturally) were solved simply by migrating to WMF servers! Life is just so sunny over here. This means, though, that we need to reboot our thinking about how to move forward. I'm proposing that we do that at Wikivoyage:Roadmap. I have a lot of ideas, although they will probably have to wait until things calm down a bit here. --Peter Talk 06:41, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

New tools[edit]

Swept from the Pub

Wondering if we should add a few new tools for editors? I suggest these two anyway.

WikEd[edit]

WikEd color codes mediawiki markup depending on what it is. Users can add it on Wikipedia under "preferences". Should we add it here?

Support
Oppose
Comments

We don't really have a ton of MediaWiki markup, not to the level of Wikipedia at least. I'm not sure how useful it would be, but it wouldn't do much harm either. LtPowers (talk) 13:16, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes Done - I've enabled this gadget. –sumone10154(talk) 21:11, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Twinkle[edit]

Twinkle is a tool that one can use to welcome new users. It may not be as good as doing each personally but does make it much faster which may be important for all the new editors joining.

Support
Oppose
Comments

Editor features: Search/replace, etc.[edit]

Swept in from the pub

When I use the classic (non-visual) editor in Wikipedia, my screen shows a lot of features, including fields for searching and replacing, which I don't see in the Wikivoyage editor. In both WP and WV, I have checked the "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" and "Enable wizards for links, formatting, tables, citations, and the search and replace function" boxes in Preferences|Edit, but that seems to have no effect on whether I see Search/Replace fields in my editor window (in WP or WV). How can I get Search/Replace in the Wikivoyage editor? Peter Chastain (talk) 22:18, 16 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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