Project:Known issues

Outstanding issues

These problems have been found during testing and not yet solved:

• the query language apparently has no way to exclude pages from query results according to specified criteria because the NOT operator finds all pages that have a property value that is not the one specified, and this is often useless for our purposes. This means that source queries for some armies will be swamped with collections of pay warrants. These warrants can be queried for separately but can't be excluded from a query for all other sources.
• there may be a bug in Special:Export that truncates the text of some pages. It is not yet known whether this also affects dumpBackup.php which is used to export to Github.
• timeline and eventline result formats always use Gregorian calendar, which puts some events in the wrong month. This means there is currently no use case for the Semantic Result Format extension, so it could probably be removed.
• when editing with a form then previewing, error message 'Some parts of the form did not reach the server' always appears. Edits are not lost and can be saved, but if header tabs are used in the form, these no longer appear on the form after preview. Seems to be connected with this bug that has not yet been fixed.
• pages from namespaces other than Main and Special do not appear in search suggestions. This is a known bug in Title Key that has not yet been patched, but only seems to occur here since upgrade from Mediawiki 1.31 to 1.35.
• sometimes trying to save an edit gives 403 forbidden error. Probably to do with mod_security but not clear what it objects to. May be semi-colons which make text look like PHP code when it isn't. These semi-colons may have been down to typos in templates which have now been fixed, but there may be cases in future where the error is triggered again.
• where a template generates an inline link to a query based on the page name, this mostly works but on at least one page it generated a link with the wrong query signature. This means that the query does nothing (doesn't even return 'No results'). Not clear how this happened as the template worked correctly on other pages.
• page names containing non-ASCII accented characters seem to sort in a strange order in categories. Need to find out what the correct order is in the relevant languages and set sort keys if necessary.
• when editing a page using a form, autocomplete suggestions match any characters and are sorted in alphabetical order without prioritising exact matches or matches at the start of the page name. This is inconvenient when linking to a county because every place name in that county will match, and many will come before the county itself. Turning off character matching would also disable accent folding.
• sometimes embedded maps don't load and just display as grey. Refreshing the page seems to fix this. Not clear if this is a problem with Maps extension or OpenStreetMap. Not seen since Maps extension upgraded to 7.18 but more testing needed.
• leaflet input in forms works if it's on the first header tab but not on the second. For now, leaflet inputs are kept on the first tab but a better solution will be needed in future.
• leaflet input ignores starting bounds. Not clear if this has really been implemented for leaflet or only for Google maps. Needs testing in Page Forms 4.9.4 as may have been fixed.
• the default skin we are using has not yet been thoroughly tested for accessibility by this project's standards. It could contain obstacles such as overcomplicated layouts, unnecessary javascript or other problems. For now, some accessibility problems are likely to have been fixed by changing the default skin to Monobook, but this could also have introduced other problems.
• TitleKey extension is known to break Visual Editor so we can't use both at once.
• using Special:ReplaceText to update incoming links after moving a page will go wrong if the page name to be changed is a substring of another page name.

Resolved issues

• Cheshire, England had been overwritten by a redirect. This has now been corrected.
• default skin is now Monobook, not Vector. This has the following effects:
  • pages load faster and have less unnecessary javascript
  • edit tabs and search box don't move after page loads
  • removes a menu that was difficult to access with the keyboard
• now using free text section instead of template for transcripts of texts, and using wiki templates instead of XML tags to mark up features in transcripts. This fixes these problems:
  • editing some pages with form caused timeout and CPU spike
  • table markup inside transcripts had to use magic word instead of pipe
  • Page Forms sometimes changed angle brackets to entity references, which stopped XML tags from being parsed properly
  • if in future we use Visual Editor, custom XML tags would not be compatible
• upgraded Page Forms extension to 4.9.4. This fixes these problems:
  • pages edited with a form had every template parameter in the source code even if no value had been entered, which stopped default values in templates from taking effect.
  • leaflet input didn't allow manually editing coordinates or pasting coordinates from elsewhere.
• <name>, <date> and <gap> tags can now be used inside footnotes if you use the optional attribute display="inline", which stops these tags from generating their own footnotes.
• search suggestions now have accent folding. This means that if you type an ASCII character such as e suggestions will also match accented versions.
• creating Events and Location pages via red link from Unit or Agent pages didn't work if page name included an apostrophe (and possibly other special characters). Target of #formlink should use {{PAGENAMEE}} to URL encode the page name, but URL encoding should NOT be used in #ifexists or normal wikilinks. Still need to investigate whether this problem affects #formredlink
• LiteSpeed cache extension has been removed because it isn't well integrated with MediaWiki and was causing some other problems. This resolves these issues:
  • map markers not displaying properly. Still happened with Maps 7.4.1. When LiteSpeed cache is enabled, Maps 7.18 has even worse problems: some map tiles don't display and no markers display.
  • pages not purged from cache unless manually edited or transcluded template edited
  • logged-in users served cached version of page that makes it look like they're not logged in
• if Special:WantedPages is out of date but no jobs in queue, use updateSpecialPages.php maintenance script.
• pages imported en masse by command line script are not autopatrolled. Solutions:
  • adding --username-prefix="" to import command stops this problem as imports will be credited to correct user, including that user's autopatrol rights. In practice, when doing it like this, imported pages don't appear in recent changes even after rebuild.
  • if pages have already been flagged as unpatrolled, this can be changed directly in the database through PHPMyAdmin: UPDATE `recentchanges` SET rc_patrolled = 2 WHERE rc_patrolled = 0 [2 means autopatrolled, 1 means manually patrolled, 0 means unpatrolled]
  • (never rebuild recent changes after import. Doing this will reflag pages as unpatrolled if they have been imported with a user prefix. This will happen again even if they have been set to patrolled directly in the database as above.)
  • (disabling patrolling in local settings is not an option as it would need to be turned on again when the wiki is opened up to other editors.)
• ByTheSwordLinkedTags extension has been removed as it wasn't really necessary.
• 'Show preview' should now work when editing with form but needs further testing to confirm. (This was caused by a div that was automatically inserted into forms but has now been manually removed.)
• / characters in unit page names have been replaced by \ in case / causes problems with subpage names in Locations and Events namespaces.
• links between counties and associations that were accidentally deleted have been added back.
• Special:Ask can now display and export up to 2,000 query results at once (was previously set to 500).
• links to Battlefields Trust website that were accidentally deleted have been added back.
• mod_security doesn't allow inline CSS. To get custom styling, add a class to a div or span tag and define that class in Mediawiki:Common.css.
• recently imported English settlements now have missing queries for sources and personnel.

Quirks

These are minor problems that can be worked around, or things that have to be done a certain way. Some of these are irrelevant to most users because they only affect the main templates, but admins need to be reminded.

• semantic tags can't be nested in other semantic tags.
• semantic text properties can't contain wikilinks or footnotes.
• categories entered using autocomplete in forms can have sort key added but needs to use magic word instead of pipe because they are inside a template parameter.
• all tags that use template parameters must use the parser function #tag and not raw XML tags to ensure that everything is parsed in the correct order.
• when linking to a map query, result format should be 'leaflet' and there should not be a space after =
  • this works: format=leaflet
  • this doesn't work: format = leaflet
• date parameters should pass a single space, not an empty string, as default value. This default value can be passed straight to #set without any sanity checks. Passing an empty string causes problems.
• interwiki links to Marine Lives need to be set up manually after a new install (this may include upgrades to a new Mediawiki version).
• in forms, free text sections must always go after all templates otherwise things go wrong.
• use multiple assignments instead of subproperties otherwise it's difficult to display subproperty values in query results.
• when using #ask parser function to make inline queries, limit=0 creates a link to the query without running it or saying whether there are any results, limit=-1 stops the query from working at all and should never be used. This does not match the documentation.
• if Litespeed cache needs to be tried again, the version at Mediawiki extensions website is out of date. Get the latest version from Github.
• new version of Title Key extension doesn't work here at all. Keep using existing version as long as possible. This includes hacks for accent folding and changing SLAVE to REPLICA which were not originally in the shipped code. NB to update database table after imports, use 'php extensions/TitleKey/rebuildTitleKeys.php' from mw directory. This is different from instructions for newer versions.
• 'show on select' doesn't work with combobox inputs.