Help:Lint errors

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When Parsoid parses a page's wikitext, it identifies patterns in wikitext that are probably mistakes. This page documents the potential issues.

The lint errors are currently displayed by the Linter extension, see Help:Extension:Linter . In the future they may also be shown when editing your signature in Preferences ; see New requirements for user signatures .

Documentation of lint issues

High-priority lint issues

deletable-table-tag (Table tag that should be deleted)
pwrap-bug-workaround (Paragraph wrapping bug workaround)
self-closed-tag (Self-closed tags)
tidy-whitespace-bug (Whitespace parsing bug)
html5-misnesting (Misnested tag with different rendering in HTML5 and HTML4)
tidy-font-bug (Old behaviour of link-wrapping font tags)
multiple-unclosed-formatting-tags (Multiple unclosed formatting tags)
multiline-html-table-in-list (Multiline table in list)
unclosed-quotes-in-heading (Unclosed quote in heading)
misc-tidy-replacement-issues (Miscellaneous issues)
duplicate-ids (Duplicate IDs)

Medium-priority lint issues

bogus-image-options (Bogus file options)
fostered (Fostered content)
misnested-tag (Misnested tags)
multi-colon-escape (Multi colon escape)
wikilink-in-extlink (Links in links)

Low-priority lint issues

missing-end-tag (Missing end tag)
missing-end-tag-in-heading (Missing end tag in heading)
stripped-tag (Stripped tags)
obsolete-tag (Obsolete HTML tags)
night-mode-unaware-background-color (Background color inline style rule exists without a corresponding text color)

Hidden lint issues

Hidden lint issues have priority set to none in the linter extension. Conceptually, these are a different class of issues than the previous categories and cover the following areas.

They might be early explorations and experiments at defining a problematic wikitext usage -- the hidden nature lets developers / product teams fine tune the linting logic and the scope of the lint and also allow for engage in a discussion without needing immediate action and fixups. Eventually, these might either be undeployed OR promoted to a non-hidden lint issue for fixup by editors and bots.
They might be a result of content analyses that might be used in other ways other than surfacing it in the Linter UI. In this case, the Linting product is being used for its analysis and storage capabilities and is not meant to feed direct action by editors and hence will never be promoted to a non-hidden lint issue.

Impact on wikignome workflows

With the inclusion of hidden issues as a concept, the goal is to minimize (and if possible, fully eliminate) any impact on existing workflows of wikignomes. Right now, this is what has been enabled.

Hidden lint issues do not show up in the Special:LintErrors page.
The REST API endpoint for fetching lint errors on a page will suppress hidden lint issues
- T360064 will provide ways to request hidden lint issues
... to be completed with any other things ...

... to be completed with any other impacts not yet addressed ...

Suppressing hidden lints from quarry results

Additionally, editors who query the linter database replicas directly via quarry are recommended to update their queries to exclude the hidden issues in the where clause. Right now, this is going to be cumbersome and will require the enumeration of ids of hidden lint issues. But, we'll investigate providing easier options here, see T334527.

For an example of how to exclude specific linter issues from a query, see the join page on page.page_id line in the query at en:Wikipedia:Linter/reports/Articles by Lint Errors.

List of hidden lint issues

Here is the current known list of hidden lint issues along with the lint issue ids in the database for use in SQL queries with quarry.