Project:Known issues

Outstanding issues

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

• November 2024:
  • some autocomplete concepts are not giving forms the full range of expected values, but the results on the concept page are complete. Upgrading PageForms and enabling cache for autocomplete values have not solved the problem. The biggest concepts are broken, but some of the broken concepts have relatively few results and some bigger ones are working.
• February 2024:
  • forms can't get autocomplete values from Main namespace because it causes a CPU spike and stops the form from loading. To stop this, 'values from namespace=Main' has been removed from forms, but this limits the autocomplete values available.
  • some inline query results are sorting in an unexpected order.
• December 2023: broken links:
  • BCW Project Regimental wiki is currently down, but discussion at The Miniatures Page forum suggests it will come back. Snapshots can be viewed at the Internet Archive but links from By The Sword Linked have not been updated to point to the archived versions.
  • the cyber attack on the British Library has led to the following links breaking:
    • Property:Has EThOS ID
    • Property:Has ESTC number
    • Property:Has BL UIN
    • Property:Has URL where it links from manuscript or collection pages to the British Library catalogue.
  • the Ordnance Survey has withdrawn its old linked data service, which has broken Property:Has Ordnance Survey ID
• 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.
• leaflet input ignores starting bounds. Needs testing in Page Forms 5.6.3 as may have been fixed.

Resolved issues

• February 2024:
  • Software upgrade has resolved many issues.
  • Most entries moved to Quirks below or deleted because no longer relevant.

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 properties

• semantic tags can't be nested in other semantic tags.
• semantic text properties can't contain wikilinks or footnotes.
• subproperties should not be used because they make it difficult to display subproperty values in query results. Simple hierarchies can be simulated by assigning the same value to more than one property, but the extra property must be assigned using #set. Multiple assignments in the same semantic link tag should no longer be used because they are not compatible with parser strict mode.

Queries

• if a query has a sort order set, pages that meet the criteria will be excluded if they have no value for the property that is used for sorting. Make sure that sort order only uses properties that always have a value.
• 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
• 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.
• 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. This means that a page with multiple values for a property will be included in query results if it has the excluded value and at least one other value; but a page will be excluded from query results if it has no value for that property. Therefore the NOT operator can only reliably be used on properties that always have exactly one value. This will work for Property:Is instance of but many other properties will make queries behave strangely if the NOT operator is used.

Templates

• 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.
• 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.

Forms

• 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.
• in forms, free text sections must always go after all templates otherwise things go wrong.
• 'show on select' doesn't work with combobox inputs.
• 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.
• 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.
• creating Events and Location pages via red link from Unit or Agent pages wouldn'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 not clear whether this problem affects #formredlink but #formredlink is not currently used.

Page names

• 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.
• 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.
• unit and agent page names should not include / characters because they conflict with paths to subpage names in Locations and Events namespaces. Use \ instead.

Other

• interwiki links to Marine Lives need to be set up manually after a new install (this may include upgrades to a new Mediawiki version).
• if Litespeed cache needs to be tried again, the version at Mediawiki extensions website is out of date. Get the latest version from Github.
• 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.
• if Special:WantedPages is out of date but no jobs in queue, use updateSpecialPages.php maintenance script.