Help talk:Extension:GlobalUserPage

Local links on something like meta when 'xtranscluded'

@Legoktm: How will you be suggesting to manage meta user pages that have meta specific links? Use of m: in the link will not work locally, cannot use a template as that won't transclude, and wrapping the m: component in <includeonly> multiple times is going to be a PITA, and hard to get users to undertake. Is there a technical means that this could be addressed? Thanks. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:31, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

1. m: does work locally.
2. Did you test before commenting? What's "transcluded" is the HTML, how could interwiki prefixes possibly matter? --Nemo 13:50, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

I just tested it, and m does work fine locally. Templates "transclude" in the sense that whatever content you see on meta should be rendered the same on remote wikis. Legoktm (talk) 18:57, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

I have had issues with m: before, glad to know that it isn't an issue today. The reference to template was a a solution to hiding m: to make it easier, and is redundant. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:34, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Proof of concept of interwikis and combinations

• Special:RecentChanges
• m:Special:RecentChanges
• w:Special:RecentChanges
• s:Special:RecentChanges
• q:Special:RecentChanges
• w:en:Special:RecentChanges
• q:en:Special:RecentChanges
• s:en:Special:RecentChanges
• w:de:Special:RecentChanges
• s:de:Special:RecentChanges
• q:de:Special:RecentChanges
• c:Special:RecentChanges
• en:Special:RecentChanges
• de:Special:RecentChanges
• de:w:Special:RecentChanges <- this one fails, it takes you back to English Wikipedia
• de:s:Special:RecentChanges
• de:q:Special:RecentChanges

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Billinghurst (talk • contribs) 00:12, 8 February 2015‎

Again, this has nothing to do with the extension at hand. The one "failure" is expected behaviour, see m:Help:Interwiki linking (I suggest you move this on the talk of that help page). --Nemo 09:51, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

The help page currently states "Links will be rendered locally". I've not yet seen an example of this, can someone show one? beta.wmflabs.org is useless as usual, because it's English only. However, because one-letter prefixes are set up everywhere, even when the target wiki doesn't exist, the statement can be verified, when the extension is enabled, checking the output of [1] on [2]. --Nemo 09:15, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Changing default page to another

Hi. Is there/Will there be a way to change the default page from the Meta's page itself to e.g. some subpage like m:Special:MyPage/global? It's not like I'm too happy with need to have loads of fancy parser functions (well otherwise I don't see how I'm gonna have it rendered depending on content language, wiki's type (I mean wp, wq, wb etc.) and so on) on the userpage itself, while it wont be so bad somewhere on a subpage I think. --Base (talk) 03:32, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

No. How do you plan on having it render differently on different wikis? That shouldn't be possible. Legoktm (talk) 22:01, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Kinda like

{{#switch:{{CONTENTLANGUAGE}}
 | uz
 | ru = {{User:Base/ru}}
 | be
 | rue 
 | uk = {{User:Base/uk}}
 | #default = {{User:Base/en}}
}}

if consider language only. Well if it would not be possible to transclude subpages than I'd have to have the contents right in the switch's code. That's why it's going to be a big code which I don't want to store on the userpage itself) --Base (talk) 22:11, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Well, that'll work. Just be aware that there is a significantly lower timeout in parsing remote pages (10 seconds currently) so if your global user page is too complex, it might not show up at all. Legoktm (talk) 06:44, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Ah actually it doesn't work since it calls CONTENTLANGUESE back on Meta :( Damn too bad, IMHO :( Without any i18n support it's kinda stupid thing. It's not just i18n actually. Because of the same thing it isn't even possible to put in babel a line that you don't understand local wiki's language (the only way it seems is to list all 200+ languages I don't know which is surely a stupid idea). Are there any plans to make it possible to call parser functions on local wikis' side? At least several of them such as aforementioned CONTENTLANGUESE… --Base (talk) 04:31, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

{{int:lang}} should work. Legoktm (talk) 07:50, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

But {{int:lang}} is an invention of guys who care about i18n and it's not in core. Unless someone has created Mediawiki:lang in a wiki it won't work. And if you want to use it as per your comment in a topic below you'd need importing all it's subpages. It's usually done in multilingual wikis which use autotranslate and similar techniques but it isn't done in singlelanguage wikis. --Base (talk) 09:13, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, but as long as it exists on Meta, it will work on all Wikimedia wikis. Legoktm (talk) 23:07, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Extension:Translate

Will this extension work 'correctly' with user pages which are translated using Extension:Translate? Will it show the correct language? If not, or if there is meta policy against translating user pages, we should document that in the help page otherwise there will be a flood of user page translations.

I notice that meta doesnt have any user pages using Translate, except User:Nemo bis/Fréttinga. John Vandenberg (talk) 07:09, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Well, this is sort of covered by the passage on transclusion, as the page translation manual says to transclude /en subpages. I think this should work: [3]. Except few "service accounts", I don't think it's appropriate to use Translate for user pages, so the problem is rare. A trick for language selection is discussed in the section above. --Nemo 07:30, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Transclude global user page as part of local user page

Is it possible to have a local page which pulls the global page but adds some content? E.g. some wikis like to categorize user pages. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 01:40, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Change the central wiki?

Is there an option to change the central wiki? For example, I would like my userpage of enwiki to be automatically transcluded everywhere, instead of meta. Is this possible? If not, will it ever be? Rehman 10:07, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

There's no option, and it is not currently planned to add such a feature. Legoktm (talk) 15:26, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, that's a deal-breaker for me :( My en.wiki userpage uses so many templates that would would not work elsewere. It's a mammoth task to make my page work on Meta. Hope to see the option to change the central wiki in the near future. Kind regards, Rehman 06:48, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Tranclusion of variables and magic words

I would like to warn visitors of my user pages in all Wikipedias and other Wikimedia's projects in languages I do not understand that I do not understand their language. So, I wrote: {{#babel:<includeonly>{{#ifeq:{{CONTENTLANGUAGE}}|ru||{{#ifeq:{{CONTENTLANGUAGE}}|eo||{{#ifeq:{{CONTENTLANGUAGE}}|en||{{CONTENTLANGUAGE}}-0}}}}}}|</includeonly>ru|eo-3|en-1}}. But the code inside of the includeonly block seems to work like it does not exist (example). IMHO, it would be useful if the variables and magic words would be transcluded on the final page. Gamliel Fishkin 00:14, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

As noted above, {{CONTENTLANGUAGE}} will always be "en" since it is parsed on Meta. You can use {{int:lang}}, which will be in the language of the user viewing the page, regardless of what wiki it is on. Legoktm (talk) 07:52, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

For basic purposes, this code would work: {{#babel:aa-5|bb-3|cc-2|{{int:lang}}-0}}. But the problem with it is that if {{int:lang}} is aa, bb, or cc, you see the language twice—once with a -0 behind it. Instead, try this (broken up for illustration, but doesn't need to be):

{{#babel:

(languages you always want to see)

aa-5|bb-3|cc-2|

(switch)

{{#switch:{{int:lang}}|

(languages you don't want repeated, so they have blank arguments)

aa=|bb=|cc=|

(default value showing -0 for all other languages)

#default={{int:lang}}-0

(then brackets for closing switch, plus brackets for closing Babel:

}} }}

In total: {{#babel:aa-5|bb-3|cc-2|{{#switch:{{int:lang}}|aa=|bb=|cc=|#default={{int:lang}}-0}}}}

There are a couple of other tricks available, too, if you're interested. StevenJ81 (talk) 23:21, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

@Gamliel Fishkin: Your specific code would look something like this: {{#babel:ru|eo-3|en-1|{{#switch:{{int:lang}}|ru=|eo=|en=|#default={{int:lang}}-0}}}}. StevenJ81 (talk) 00:41, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

By the way, for whatever reason, this isn't working right on this wiki, because {{int:lang}} doesn't parse correctly here unless the language is English. Try the code on Meta, Commons or Wikidata. StevenJ81 (talk) 00:53, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Feedback

I've been looking forward to global user pages for a long time. Well done for implementing them! I've taken the plunge, and have merged all of my user pages to meta:User:Mike Peel (from enwp, commons, enwikisource and many other wikis). It's mostly been straightforward to do this, however I have encountered several problems, which include bugs in the implementation and general usability issues. Namely:

• Usability issue: We don't have a standard set of templates across all of the wikis. For example, compare en:Template:icon with meta:Template:icon. Two very useful templates, but they are very different in implementation. Or consider templates that only exist on one wiki and not meta, e.g. en:Template:Authority control.
• Bug: Where a link exists on a local wiki but not on meta, then a redlink will appear on the local wiki that links through to existing page. E.g. see en:User:Mike_Peel#Unknown_Did_you_know.3F - all those redlinks work on enwp and link to the local page, but aren't being displayed properly. This contradicts the guidance here that "Wikilinks are relative, so they'll point to the local wiki." Either the links should work on the local wiki, or they should link to meta.
• Bug: as above, but also for templates. Again see en:User:Mike_Peel, but look for "Template:User Wikipedian For". The template exists on enwp but not on meta, but the redlink when the user page is viewed on enwp points towards a working template, rather than either properly displaying the template or linking to a meta redlink.
• Usability issue: it doesn't seem to be possible to include a user page in local categories. After I deleted my enwp userpage, I tried adding it back to a local category (one that would make sense to have here on meta, but it currently only exists on enwp), and after saving the category was present but the rest of the userpage had gone away. After re-deleting my local user page the global userpage reappeared. Additionally, my local user pages aren't being included in categories that exist both on the local wiki and meta.
• Usability issue: while I have been able to request deletion of my old userpage redirects from most wikis, a) each wiki tends to use its own variant of a delete/sdelete/speedy delete template, which doesn't make it easy to copy-paste-save deletion requests, b) some wikis are less active than others so deletion takes a while (e.g. [4]), and c) some wikis are closed for editing and there is no obvious way to request deletion on these wikis (e.g. [5]).

None of these are deal-breakers: I plan to continue using a single user page for the foreseeable future. I'm reporting these issues in the hope that they will lead to an improvement of functionality, not to complain about them. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:56, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

• I used to use my meta user page for things that were important to me on Meta, just as I use my enwiki userpage to post things that are important to me on that project. My meta user page was not useful to me anywhere other than on Meta, and frankly looked pretty stupid anywhere else. So I've solved the situation by wiping the page completely. I'm not criticizing the idea at all - I think it is a good one. But I'd really like to have been able to have a userpage on Meta that was different from anywhere else and was useful to me on that specific project. Seems to me the ideal situation would have been for people to identify which userpage they'd want as their default global one. I would have chosen one on, say, Swahili Wikisource, a project I'd otherwise never edit, and would be unlikely to want to have a unique userpage for. Risker (talk) 13:00, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
• I've been looking everywhere for these legendary merge instructions and haven't seen them anywhere? Are there instructions on merging local userpages to the global? (please post a not on my enwiki talk when responding) Oiyarbepsy (talk) 20:58, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Query part

On the help page Pathoschild radically trimmed my "this does not work" essaycaveat as redundant, because the help page already says that this doesn't work. However, I'd really like to get links with a query part relative to the local wiki, instead of implicitly full URLs linking to the central wiki. Example: Everything constructed with {{Special }} rendered as local special page with one name=value parameter (i.e., query part) would be nice. –Be..anyone (talk) 20:18, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Blue link with noinclude

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T90849

Hi! After the extension activation one of my collegue on itwiki, it:User:Castagna, found out his user page created. In fact he has a user page on meta meta:User:Castagna. He doesn't want the blu link on itwiki so he put the noinclude on meta. The page disappeared, but the blue link remains. It's a bug? --AlessioMela (talk) 23:40, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

@AlessioMela: That's phab:T90849. I've uploaded a patch for it. --Ricordisamoa 19:42, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Opt-in / opt-out

Hello, I wonder whether this feature should be opt-in or opt-out. I can imagine that many other Wikimedia users are unhappy, like me, with their Meta user page content being displayed on other wikis they don't know about. Was there a discussion about this point? Ziko (talk) 19:40, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

@Ziko: Currently there are no options for opt-in / opt-out. But you can control what content is displayed on other wikis, using the <noinclude> and <includeonly> tags. Soon this might be changed. You may be interested also in this small ongoing discussion: m:Wikimedia_Forum#User_page. XXN (talk) 13:23, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. Ziko (talk) 14:42, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

@Ziko: The documentation pages were not updated and this has created confusions. The __NOGLOBAL__ magic word is now available, which if present on the central (meta) user page, will prevent it from being displayed on remote wikis. --XXN (talk) 21:17, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

RTL bug

Hi On RTL wikis the text below is "//meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:... The page was copied from" You need rlm characters or some direction span. IKhitron (talk) 13:12, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

GlobalUserPage and Web indexing

By the way, irresponsible deployment of the feature (especially, an epic fail with __NOINDEX__) created yet another widespread pollution of indices, propelled by the high rank of Wikipedia. It currently can’t be abated effectively short of applying __NOGLOBAL__ (opting out) per user. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 11:19, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Question

How come when it is copied it does not save to your userpage? 47.16.99.72 21:24, 23 March 2020 (UTC)