These are some features that would be nice to have, but are low priority, may be quite complicated to code, or are otherwise unlikely to be implemented any time soon.
For non-admins, make an edit request if a page is protected. [1]
When closing as "redirect", remove parameters from the WikiProject talk page templates (so they can auto-categorize) [2]
For RfDs, better rcat handling for keep and other non-delete closes – detect existing rcat templates, allow closer to choose to keep/remove/add rcats.
More sophisticated handling of old xfd templates: Placement per WP:TPL
When opening dialog, check that discussion isn't already closed
Multi-relist option when viewing AFD log – checkboxes for each discussion on the log page, click relist once to relist all checked discussions
RFD: Remove logpage transclusion if no more discussions are open
'Redirect and fully protect' – just indefinite full protection with a standard "per [link to AFD]" reason
Emphasise important errors like when a deletion fails. If there are lots of warnings, e.g. from backlinks, the more important errors can be overlooked.
The backlog of bugs and feature requests as noted in the other sections of this page has built up quite a lot, especially over the past year or so while I haven't been so active on Wikipedia. Finding out what the community's priorities are would help me, as the primary author/maintainer of XFDcloser, to decide the order in which I work on issues. Note that responses here will just be one factor, with the other main factor being the scope/complexity of coding changes required. - Evad37[talk]14:30, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I really haven't been active at CfD for many months but I want to put in a word for improving support there. Closing discussions without XFDcloser dealing with the tags takes significantly longer and is one of the reasons I'm not excited to help out there. Pings to some of the most prolific closers from what I remember @Fayenatic london, Marcocapelle, and Bibliomaniac15:. --Trialpears (talk) 21:17, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the ping, Trialpears. I agree that it would be nice if more support for CFD could be added, since it's a dreadfully lonely place. The main roadblock is of course that pretty much any result other than keep, no change, or no consensus defaulting to keep virtually requires the use of WP:CFD/W. For those unfamiliar with the process, after closing a CFD, we list it on WP:CFD/W, where a bot recategorizes everything according to the move/merge or uncategorizes according to deletion, and then performs the necessary pagemoves and deletions. The added layer of complexity is admittedly one of the drawbacks of the categorization system in general, which advantages working in articlespace at the expense of making categories more difficult to curate directly. Ambitiously, if XFDcloser cut out the middleman by also doing the recategorizing/uncategorizing work, we might not need CFD/W except in niche cases, but this would have to be rigorously tested to make sure things don't break. bibliomaniac1522:02, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've never tried XFDcloser, but I think it would merely save a few steps in the entries on CFD log pages alone. For reference, WP:CFDAI sets out the usual things involved in CFD closures. I usually use WP:CFDW to get a bot to process the member pages, or to post {{Old CfD}} on retained category talk pages. One benefit of using CFDW is that we have a discipline of checking backlinks to the old category name before removing an entry, in order to avoid leaving red links. But occasionally, I process a small category manually, or use WP:Cat-a-lot for some or all of the processing; or in cases requiring changes to template parameters, use WP:JWB on the member pages. – FayenaticLondon11:48, 13 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In a multi-article AfD, the ability to manually add titles that the software then handles the same way it currently does; nominators sometimes don't format these correctly, leaving many pages to be cleaned up manually. Vanamonde (Talk)18:30, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Reduce scope and make it easier for you to maintain; it's far too vital a tool now to overdesign its core purpose. Thanks for maintaining it. czar00:51, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Qwerfjkl. Do you have a diff for this one? Unclear which template, which deletion process (AFD, CFD, etc.), what the state of other relevant pages is (daily log page, article page, talk page), etc. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:49, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Please make it remove CFD templates from category pages after "no consensus" even if the templates were incorrectly not placed at the top of the page. (81 errors out of 82 here) – FayenaticLondon16:31, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Sometimes it does not edit the category or category talk pages at all, e.g. [3] when that option was definitely selected (screenshot available on request). These actions appear to have broken in a recent update. – FayenaticLondon17:44, 4 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Top request: For a Keep result, please populate the Action parameter on the talk page, e.g. "rename" was needed at [4]. Although it sometimes does this, e.g. [5].
Add a new Action (at least when using Custom) to replace the category page template with {{Cfd manual}}, e.g. for splits. The closer would still have to list the job at WP:CFDWM, but doing the template would be neat. – FayenaticLondon10:09, 17 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Update the URL in the browser's location bar to the current section, as would be the case if I had edited the section. This is so that I can copy the URL to paste into edit summaries when making manual changes. Currently, when using XFDcloser, the location bar URL does not get updated to the relevant section heading. – FayenaticLondon09:47, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I relisted around 7 or 8 discussions and they were removed from the 8/10/23 AFD log page but not put on to the 8/17/23 page. So, I cut and pasted them manually. But relisting happens a lot so I hope whatever problem is happening can get fixed. Thanks. LizRead!Talk!03:22, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So, XFDcloser did relist discussions but to the wrong date, to August 16th even though it became August 17th UTC hours ago. Anyone else seeing this problem? LizRead!Talk!04:48, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This relisting problem is still an issue. I relisted several discussions last night where the AFD discussions weren't removed from the daily log page. But the bigger problem is when XFDcloser removes the discussion from the current daily log but doesn't repost it to the future daily log so the discussion completely disappears from our AFD pages. We used to have a few editors who looked for AFD discussions that fell through the cracks like this and were never closed and they would repost them, sometimes months later. I'd say we have XFDcloser relisting problems about 1-5% of the time so it's not often but it's regular enough that I wish a developer would look into it. LizRead!Talk!02:36, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The next time this happens, if y'all can provide some diffs, that would help with debugging. I'll need to copy wikicode of several pages over to testwiki to try to recreate this, and diffs would provide this wikicode. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:55, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Above, someone mentioned that it was relisting to the wrong log page. Below, someone mentioned that it was not relisting to any log page, or did not remove the relist from the old log page. Hmm.
Someone mentions this happens on 1-5% of relists. 1-5% of the time could be a wikicode issue (easy to fix), the log page not created yet (easy to fix), a race condition (hard to fix), or connection issues such as jQuery error http (hard to fix). –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:00, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
About a week ago, XFDcloser has vanished from when I view AfD's. I have checked across three different computers, all of which use Google Chrome (latest version).
Have tried deactivating and reactivating through preferences, also to no avail.
I am technologically deficient in many respects so I'm sure I'm missing something obvious - has anyone else encountered this issue, or alternatively does anyone know a fix I should try?
This page is using the deprecated ResourceLoader module "jquery.ui". Please use Codex instead. execute @ load.php?lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&raw=1&skin=monobook:12
OK, so...I changed from Monobook to Vector (2022) and the closing buttons have reappeared (with no other changes on my part). It's a shame, cos I love Monobook (call me old-fashioned), but it seems like something with the Monobook isn't agreeing with XFDCloser. They also work in Vector Legacy (2010) and that looks similar to Monobook, so that's a suitable workaround from my perspective. Daniel (talk) 03:17, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Daniel, there were recent changes to the header HTML for certain skins, which is probably what caused this. These changes will also be rolled out for both vectors at some point in the future. — Qwerfjkltalk05:53, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Qwerfjkl, thanks for the update. Confirming both Vectors are working as of right now...with any luck Monobook will work nicely with XFDCloser some time in the future, although it's not a massive issue to use Vector (2010). Daniel (talk) 06:42, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm able to reproduce on Monobook. This should be pretty easy to patch. The hard part will be figuring out how to test and deploy it. Looks like this tool hasn't had a patch in two years so it's unlikely the maintainer is around. I might look into this tomorrow. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:02, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I figured it out and wrote a patch. I'll give @Evad37 a couple days to see the GitHub emails and see if they want to comment. If Evad is MIA, I have enough access to deploy this (intadmin, wikimedia-gadgets member), but would rather check with them first :) –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:17, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Please ping me if the deployment breaks anything. It's my first time deploying for this repo. The minified file has an unexplained -50,000 bytes. However my quick checks didn't find anything broken. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:57, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Howdy folks. I might be interested in doing some work on this gadget. And there's like 100 sections on this page. Can you please give me a recap of what you think the most serious bugs are? So I can start to prioritize. Feel free to link to the appropriate sections above too. Thank you. P.S. Let's focus on bugs rather than feature requests for now. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:32, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Novem Linguae, at CfD, the only major bug I've experienced is that XfDCloser can't handle nominations with >50 pages; it'll have something like "http error". This is probably due to the limit of 50 pages per API request for non-admin or bot accounts (the higher limits are 500), and XfDCloser doesn't batch requests properly. Sometimes this error causes XfDCloser to fail on the rest of the page, though this is pretty rare. — Qwerfjkltalk11:32, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Biggest bugs seem to be around RFD and CFD. This thread from 2022 also has some of the "best of" issues that people are experiencing. I also noticed (going through all of the threads on this page) that many of these are likely one-time issues (and a few of them actually were resolved and just not archived). I'll try to do a second pass... soonish... and tag the ones that I think were sorted out Primefac (talk) 10:45, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Novem Linguae, I probably should have mentioned this before, but: The main bug I have is XFDCloser not loading. It fails haphazardly, so I assume the issue is a race condition with other scripts. For reference, heres what my HTML looks like with the other scripts loaded (not XFDCloser):
It would be nice if XFDCloser was more robust at handling this kind of stuff. (And yes, I realise there's an open phab ticket for an API to add links to section headers). — Qwerfjkltalk17:57, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was able to reproduce using your common.js settings. I agree that it's probably a race condition. If another user script changes the HTML in that area, it could mess up XFDcloser's attempt to add its links. Might try disabling WikiNotes as a test and see if that fixes it, because that user script is putting links in the same area as XFDcloser. If that doesn't work, because I'm able to reproduce it, we know that it's something in your common.js, so you could use a bisect technique to figure out what script is conflicting. Bisecting involves commenting out half of your common.js, then seeing if that fixes it. If it does, then comment out half of that. If it doesn't, then re-enable that half and comment out the other half. And so on and so forth. You'd have to refresh a bunch of times to be sure since this is only happening like 50% of the time. –Novem Linguae (talk) 14:18, 23 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm. Not sure how I got the word "WikiNotes" into my head. I think I was referring to the pencil icon and similar icons in the CFD heading sections in V22, which I think are placed there by Factorum. So I guess my recommendation is to turn off Factorum for a bit and see if that fixes things. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:10, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Are XFDcloser links supposed to show for RFD/TFD/etc entries that are hatted? Currently the links are showing in some cases. I am wondering if this is a bug, or useful behavior. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:36, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I figured it out. They are not supposed to show for hatted sections, relisted sections on the old page, etc. The XFDcloser links are supposed to be hidden if the XFD is already actioned. –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:27, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For some reason, the regular XFDcloser options are not showing up on AFD discussions. I've uninstalled all of the programs and unselected the gadget. Then I selected the gadget again in the Preferences again but still, no options appear that would allow me to close a discussion. What's up here? LizRead!Talk!23:21, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was referring to RfD. Sorry for not mentioning. I have switched to Vector 2022 temporarily until Vector 2010 is fixed. Jay 💬05:34, 8 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see the green close, quickClose and relist links. When I change my skin from Vector 2010 to 2022, and refresh the RfD page, I see them. When I switch the preference back to 2010, the links are no longer seen. How do I post a screenshot? I was on Edge, but tried on Chrome as well. I see console errors like
2024_June_1:547 This page is using the deprecated ResourceLoader module "codex-search-styles".
[1.43] Use a CodexModule with codexComponents to set your specific components used: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Codex#Using_a_limited_subset_of_components
(anonymous) @ 2024_June_1:547
startup.js:1307 This page is using the deprecated ResourceLoader module "jquery.ui".
Please use Codex instead.
execute @ startup.js:1307
startup.js:1307 This page is using the deprecated ResourceLoader module "mediawiki.ui".
[1.41] Please use Codex. See migration guidelines: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Codex/Migrating_from_MediaWiki_UI
execute @ startup.js:1307
index.php?title=User:PrimeHunter/Source_links.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript:36
10Third-party cookie will be blocked. Learn more in the Issues tab.
Thanks for that. Deprecation notices aren't anything to worry about. We're looking for things like "error" and "uncaught". Here's a graphic with more details about what to look for in the console.
To take a screenshot, you press your "Prt Scn" key, open a graphics program such as MS Paint, paste it in, save it, then upload it somewhere. Third party sites like imgur.com can be good for this if you're OK with not using FOSS. If you want to upload it to Commons for FOSS reasons, then you'd want to use c:Special:UploadWizard, although there are many more restrictions due to copyright. For example, you're supposed to crop out your operating system unless it's Linux, and you're only supposed to screenshot open source browsers such as Firefox, rather than proprietary software such as Chrome or Edge.
Two useful screenshots would be 1) the RFD page (so I can verify your skin) and 2) the console (so I can look at the error messages). –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:53, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
[edit conflict] No, there are no errors. I know to take screenshots, uploading them was the question. Definitely do not want to upload to Commons where it will be permanent. Same for imgur I guess. Is there a site where images are kept for a day or so and purged? That will be perfect for screenshots. Jay 💬12:03, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be possible to have the script automatically post a message on the nominator's talk page once a discussion is closed? There would need to be a way for nominators to disable that if it annoys them though; not sure how it could be done. Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 20:08, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No comment on the feature, but more than a feature discussion, I think this is about responsibility. Of all participants, I believe the nominator ought to be the most responsible in tracking the discussion and seeing where it is going. For 7-day discussions, if I was a nom, I would check daily or once in two days. As part of making the nomination, the nom would also have the relevant pages in the watchlist. Jay 💬07:46, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure this is necessary; just to use TFD as an example, there are a few editors who nominate dozens of pages every week for relatively mundane reasons, and they likely do not need or want to know the outcome of those discussions (never mind the fact that they're probably watching the template itself and will get a notification when the discussion is closed). They don't also need dozens of talk page notices each week telling them the outcome. Primefac (talk) 01:02, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Interstellarity: For what it's worth, I'm all about having this gadget use the target instead of the redirect, but converting Template:Relist into a disambiguation page is controversial: Such a major change to the way things have been done for over a decade probably needs discussion at WP:RFD. Steel1943 (talk) 16:24, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
but with all the other links around I never thought that the way to go to the relisting was to click on the date. A wikilink text should say what the link will go to, but this one does not. So I propose that it instead should look like one of these:
Note that these link to the same place but now it says that the relisting is there whereas it didn't before. Perhaps this comment applies to other things too; I don't know. Thanks for considering. Zerotalk13:00, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
{{Tfd top}} doesn't format anything, notice that in #Closing the discussion the full close is input as a parameter. I suspect XFDC (and probably Doug's old extension which I still use occasionally) just used that logic as well. I am still thinking about whether I think this is a helpful change vs changing a well-used and long-standing format/convention. Primefac (talk) 16:05, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We could try using clearer wording. For example, changing the current wording of
The result of the discussion was relisted on 2024 August 6
to
The result of the discussion was relisted (please see the 2024 August 6 TFD discussion page)
Can I firstly say, thank you so much Novem Linguae for all your work with patching and bug investigating over the past couple of months - you are an unsung hero!
This is a very greedy wishlist request but I was wondering if there was capacity at some point in the future to add "draftify" as one of the results for AfD? It seems to be a reasonably common outcome nowadays and, while it is eminently achievable by using "custom" and then actioning all the page moves etc., would be amazing for it to be all bundled up. Fully understand if not possible though, or not a priority given everything else happening.
Looks like Vanamonde93 already requested this back in 2022. Ticket. I'll slap a high priority tag on it since it is now requested by multiple people. (This just means that if a volunteer dev ever sits down to work on tickets, hopefully they consider prioritizing it. There's no active development at the moment.) By the way, can you go into a bit more detail about the "extra steps" for drafts? Is the only extra step moving the page to the draft namespace, or are there other steps? Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:19, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's late here but to my memory, click 'custom' > type "draftify" > close > go to article > move article (and tick 'move talk page' and 'do not leave redirect') > comment out categories on draft page (could be automated?). The bot adds the 'draft from mainspace' template afterwards. Might be something else? Daniel (talk) 13:25, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I feel like a slight tweak of this would actually make it more useful across more circumstances. For example, at TFD there are (not super-often) "userfications" made to templates, where the template is moved to a userspace, similar to a draftification at AFD. It might be worth having a generic "move" option in the closer options, where the closer can choose the new name of the page (e.g. "Example -> Draft:Example" or "Template:Example -> User:Joe/Template:Example") which could do the move-without-redirect. I do recognise that moving pages is a bit more involved than just editing or deleting pages, so if that sort of expanded functionality is too much, then I guess I'll just have to live with it! Primefac (talk) 13:34, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Seems like there could be 3 additional modes to add here: AFD draftify, AFD userfy, and TFD userfy. Any others? I'm not sure a move feature would be as useful for things like CFD, RFD, and FFD. Draftify has enough unique stuff going on (turning off categories, adding Moved Draft template) in it that it may make sense to keep it separate. There's also some positives to pre-programming the correct terminology in. For example "draftify" would probably be better to write in an AFD close than "move to Draft:X". –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:57, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi! I have an easy (I think?) request: Like at WP:TFD, non-admins are permitted to close discussions at WP:CFD as delete (see WP:NACD for the official guideline saying deletion NACs at CFD are okay). Would it be possible to enable this option for non-admins at CFD, like how it is enabled at TFD? Thanks, HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 23:18, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@HouseBlaster. Are there any CFD workflows that would change by not having the delete button? For example, for non-admins, maybe instead of trying to delete the page, the gadget would instead need to add the page to a queue / holding cell?
@Novem Linguae: You are correct, it is probably not; however, this template does appear on redirects tagged by PageTriage, and as hinted above in the top section of this talk page, XFDcloser is not able to remove these tags from redirects after their respective RFD discussions have been closed. Steel1943 (talk) 17:31, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
XFDcloser creating erroneous edit summaries and linking to Undefined after AfD/PROD closures
@Novem Linguae: Looking through some more recent edit summaries that include the link to undefined, it seems that this link is only caused by delinking pages that have been deleted through the PROD process, not AfD (contrary to what I originally assumed), and happens in title with or without spaces (from what I saw). The only way I was able to figure this out is because Explicit does a good amount of deletions, so I was able to see this pattern. (Explicit, thank you for all that you do; sorry this tool has not been working correctly and makes your PROD article delink edit summaries look wrong.) Steel1943 (talk) 17:36, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Primefac: To answer your since-removed comment since you make a good point that I was not aware of myself until you made the comment, it seems that the deletion itself is performed by Twinkle (see Animal Behavior Society), but XFDcloser does the delinking of the page deleted via PROD. Does that mean that Twinkle and XFDcloser interface with each other when both are enabled? (Not sure, and I'm not sure who would know.) Steel1943 (talk) 17:24, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Novem Linguae: I definitely agree and understand that it is XFDcloser causing the error with the delinking edit summary problems. However, the timestamps for the PROD deletion of Animal Behavior Society (Twinkle) and the delinking of a link to it in another article (the diff in my initial statement [XFDcloser]) are identical. This leads me to believe one of the following: 1) Twinkle has an option built into it to perform delinkings with XFDcloser after a PROD, thus meaning XFDcloser is not sure what to link as a result, or 2) the issue may be caused by user error, possibly by running Twinkle and XFDcloser almost simultaneously. Steel1943 (talk) 21:04, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The bug is not related to Twinkle. PROD deletions are only supported in Twinkle, and although Twinkle has its own Unlink tool, XFDC's unlinking is more feature-rich, so many users tend to prefer that – you can see the option on any non-existing page under "Tools" (vector-2022) or in the "More" dropdown (vector-2010). – SD0001 (talk) 18:12, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Based on all that has been stated so far, seems both of my assumptions are incorrect and the examples that I provided from Explicit show that they are a fast clicker and that the two gadgets do not technically interrupt each other, meaning this probably has nothing to do with Twinkle. But, it seems there may be a new theory here: Do links to undefined in edit summaries only occur via the "XFDC Unlink" option when the respective page is deleted before running "XFDC Unlink"? Steel1943 (talk) 18:46, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I tried to test this by adding a wikilink to a non-existent page to my sandbox and to a mainspace redirect. I couldn't get the XFDC Unlink tool to remove them. I don't really want to add a test link to a live article, so might be hard to test this. Might need to install the gadget on testwiki and mess around with it there to do it properly.
Also, I wonder why we don't have a mainspace sandbox. Would make certain kind of tests much easier. Maybe we could hard-code it into MediaWiki to always noindex it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:47, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed.
Resolved
Resolved
Template:Rfd-NPF has been nominated for merging with Template:Redirect for discussion. Watchers of this page are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Steel1943 (talk) 22:16, 22 September 2024 (UTC)