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Hi all, is there any possible way to get XFDcloser to catch circular redirects in hatnotes like this in response to WP:Articles for deletion/List of Worldwar characters? As seen, the removal has to be done manually since the tool ignores/bypasses them. Left guide (talk) 03:23, 25 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 July 25#Affect of ice age in uk which XFDcloser thinks is ready to close even though it's been open for less than 24 hours. I'm guessing this happened because nom's comment includes a quote that has a signature so XFDcloser thinks the RFD was opened in 2005. Warudo (talk) 10:01, 26 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 You are invited to join the discussion at WP:VPT § XFDcloser should update links to RFD if the discussion is relisted. Warudo (talk) 18:13, 1 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, whomever monitors this talk page,

I ran into a problem with XFDcloser. I use it on a daily basis to close AFD discussions, but when I closed Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Church of England instruments, XFDcloser unlinked or removed a lot of mentions of words, terms and subjects that weren't the article subject (List of Church of England instruments). It has caused a mess that other editors helped clean up. Do you know why XFDcloser would remove links to terms that weren't the AFD subject when closing an AFD? I haven't had this problwm before now. Thanks for any explanation you can provide. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 18:37, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There have been no deploys this month, so recent code changes are not to blame. Must be an unusual edge case. Can you link some of the diffs where XFDcloser unlinked incorrect terms associated with List of Church of England instruments? –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:08, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some example diffs: [1] [2] [3]. The problem could be related to the redirect pages having {{UK legislation}} on them e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Finance_Act_1949&redirect=no. Until the de-linking, that template did include a link to List of Church of England instruments.

As far as I know we don't normally include templates other then categorisation ones on redirect pages. @Hughbe98, is there a reason you added {{UK legislation}} to these pages? the wub "?!" 21:36, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi - I added the navbox to pages for Acts of Parliament of the UK. It’s standard practice for articles about acts of parliament. There are equivalents for Parliaments of GB and England. Hughbe98 (talk) 22:00, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't (and please remove them). It's one thing to categorise a redirect, but they should not have article content on them such as navboxes. Primefac (talk) 00:18, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think the problem is that UnlinkBacklinks.js considers any redirect found in the backlinks as something to unlink, rather than only redirects to the page being deleted. jlwoodwa (talk) 00:02, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, when closing at CfD, instead of the standard close/quick close/relist sometimes I get a "http error retrieving page information (reload the page to try again)". This seems to happen in groups e.g. everything at WP:Categories for discussion/Log/2025 September 3 is normal but every discussion at WP:Categories for discussion/Log/2025 September 4 gives an error (though I'm occasionally able to get past this by clicking the buttons before the error message loads, and then it works fine). There's also the "toomanyvalues error retrieving page information (reload the page to try again)", but that might just be there to prevent NACs from making bigger closes? Not sure if this is a CfD problem or XfDcloser problem but help/advice appreciated :). Cheers! GoldRomean (talk) 04:20, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

HTTP errors are usually internet connection problems. How's your internet connection? Any slowness or pages occasionally not loading or occasional outages?

I have no idea on the toomanyvalues.

Would love to hear if others also get http errors or toomanyvalues errors when closing CSDs, especially non admins, to see if there's any patterns here. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:49, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Now that I think of it, Wikipedia does load (slightly) longer than expected on occassion. Interestingly enough, tried a different WiFi and on the 4 Sept log #Category:Television shows about mother–daughter relationships and above now works, below still gives errors. (If it helps toomanyvalues is showing up for American sportspeople by country of descent and Category:Balestrand on the 3 Sept log.)

Pinging some other CfD NACs @Qwerfjkl, @Hilst, probably others I missed. Cheers. GoldRomean (talk) 14:56, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Novem Linguae, this is the same toomanyvalues error from https://github.com/wikimedia-gadgets/xfdcloser/pull/87. The http error is caused by a similar issue, I mentioned it in my pull request as well. It's not a network error, it's because the request uri is too long. — Qwerfjkltalk 15:19, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. Copy. I've been meaning to review your patch, but it is a risky patch, and hard to test. Will see if I can find some time to dive into it more. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:02, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed, hopefully. Patch merged and deployed. Will take effect in 10 minutes. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:36, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you both! It looks like it's working now (and the toomanyvalues ones now give [XFDcloser: Too many pages for non-admin]). Cheers, GoldRomean (talk) 00:11, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like that's a hard-coded restriction. if ( !this.userIsSysop && this.pages.length > 50 ) { this.status = "[XFDcloser: Too many pages for non-admin]"; } Funny that we did all this work on the API to allow chunking, but now we're running into a hard coded restriction.

Should the hard-coded restriction be removed? Or is it prudent to only allow admins to close big XFDs? If we think it's OK to remove, maybe Qwerfjkl would be willing to write another patch. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:51, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Novem Linguae, I think there's no need for the restriction. WP:BADNAC obviously applies, but I think it falls on the closer to assess whether they should actually perform a close. There can be routine nominations that have more than 50 pages. I might have a go at writing a patch later. — Qwerfjkltalk 09:28, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Novem Linguae, https://github.com/wikimedia-gadgets/xfdcloser/pull/112 should address this. The test passes. — Qwerfjkltalk 20:41, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's a patch in the queue to allow non-admins to close huge XFDs (>50 pages). This is currently restricted, but after this patch would no longer be restricted. Is everyone OK with this? Will merge the patch in a couple days if there's no objections.

The risk is an inexperienced gadget user closing a big XFD incorrectly and making a mess. Could require a lot of reverting. If the community is OK with that risk, happy to merge the patch. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:52, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Novem Linguae, which XfDs actually allow making edits to a lot of pages (for non-admins)? I know at CfD it's done by a bot (and so the change to XFDCloser won't cause increased potential for a mess), but presumably at other XfDs it's done differently? — Qwerfjkltalk 20:56, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure. Maybe one of the tests you or I should do is go on testwiki, log into a non-admin account, XFDclose an MFD with 2 pages as delete, and see what XFDcloser does. Maybe it's smart enough to take away the delete button? –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:07, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

When this AfD was closed early, the deletion tags weren't removed from the article. The article history on the talk page was also not updated. – SD0001 (talk) 10:58, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If this is the first time that's happened, it might be a client-side issue. Primefac (talk) 12:58, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The redirect XFDcloser has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 October 17 § JWBS until a consensus is reached. Rusalkii (talk) 20:14, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Afd top. —Matrix _{ping me}^{when u reply} (t? - c) 20:51, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

When updating the RfD template after a discussion is relisted, day/month parameters don't get updated (examples [4][5]), so it continues linking to the old entry. 9ninety (talk) 12:43, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@9ninety: This is not a bug, but actually is functioning as intended and needed. The timestamps need to remain to ensure that both the redirects are in the proper RfD month category, in addition to forwarding the reader to the initial nomination date first. (FYI, this has been discussed on this page before with the same answer: Wikipedia talk:XFDcloser/Archive 5#Date not updated when relisted at RFD.) Steel1943 (talk) 22:32, 9 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

How is forwarding readers to the initial nomination date, forcing them to click multiple times to reach their destination, helpful? 9ninety (talk) 11:32, 11 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Gadget code has to be validated and will be minified by the server anyway, so all the minification in the MediaWiki namespace does is make it harder to locate which part of the code is responsible for what and it seems pointless and counterproductive. Nardog (talk) 15:05, 25 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Please feel free to join the discussion at https://github.com/wikimedia-gadgets/xfdcloser/issues/105. Patches welcome. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:09, 25 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am currently unable to close Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2025 December 15 § Category:Anthropophagy, which needs the "Multiple results" feature. I can select "Rename" for the first category, but when I try to type the name of the destination category (whether immediately when the border of the input box turns red, or after clicking it and turning it blue), text does not go into the input box. Instead, when I type "C", the pull-down changes to "Custom", which is obviously incorrect. If I select "Rename" for both categories, trying to type a destination starting with "C" changes both to "Custom". Trying to type in the "Rationale" input box after selecting "Rename" for both categories, leaving the destination input box borders red, has no effect. I am using firefox-146.0-3.fc43.x86_64 on Fedora Linux. -- Beland (talk) 03:08, 4 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Beland, I can reproduce this (also firefox). Pasting into the input field seems to still work. — Qwerfjkltalk 10:54, 4 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm using this workaround to close this specific discussion; for debugging purposes, I'm sure it can be reproduced with any multi-page nomination. -- Beland (talk) 04:48, 5 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

See e.g. Special:diff/1331329095 and Special:diff/1331332383. I used a custom message both times. -- Beland (talk) 20:53, 5 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Question first, Beland, do you remember what you specifically laid out when you did this? I am assuming you used the Custom option with "redirect=yes" as the result, also unchecking the "result is a new sentence" box?

I ask because I think the = in the close is the reason; I made a test log entry with that rationale gave the same result, noting that removing the = gave the expected result. Primefac (talk) 11:37, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I did select the Custom option and put "delete or add redirect=yes as specified by SilverLocust" as the custom outcome. I don't remember if I unchecked the "new sentence" box (I usually don't), but XFDcloser shouldn't put the wrong outcome whether it's checked or not. It seems properly handling the = is what's needed; I suspected that as well, because it's an unusual character to show up in this field. -- Beland (talk) 00:10, 18 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

For the last few days I have noticed that TFDs closed as delete and listed as "Orphan" are showing up as "Ready to delete". Just one (of many) examples: this diff. I specifically filed that as "orphan" yet it was placed in "ready to delete". This is causing major issues at the holding cell. @Evad37 and Novem Linguae: is this something you can look into? Happy to provide more examples if it would help diagnose the issue... Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 04:17, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Did this used to work but recently broke? If so, when did it start? –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:23, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

This was working perfectly for a LONG time. Best I can tell it started about a week ago? I've been noticing a lot of things listed in "Ready to delete" that have not been orphaned. Then when I closed things as "Orphan" I realized what was happening. Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 04:25, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Do any of the December commits look like they could be the cause? I don't see any commits changing TFD, but if this suddenly started a week ago, it's worth checking. –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:42, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing jumps out at me, but I will be honest this is a bit beyond my level of expertise. I can assure you that it is definitely not working the way it was a few weeks ago. Sorry I can't give you an exact date...

@Gonnym, Plastikspork, Pppery, Jonesey95, Primefac, and HurricaneZeta: You all are frequent editors of the holding cell... Have you all been seeing the issue I describe above? Do you have any idea when it started? Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 04:50, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Someone deleted a section called "Meta" between December 31 and today. Is the XFDCloser tool counting page sections and off by one? – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:35, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Could the removal of the. eta heading be a problem?? (Pretty sure I did that....) Perhaps it is expecting X number of headings?? Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 06:38, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Very short answer is yes, it goes by section number so if a section is deleted (or added) it messes things up. Primefac (talk) 11:15, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

This XFDcloser code in Venue.js does suggest that the holding cell section order is hard-coded: https://github.com/wikimedia-gadgets/xfdcloser/blob/f06a7a189f13966ba0c2ae2710a943d8e59f48bc/xfdcloser-src/Venue.js#L182-L193

Would recommend adding the meta heading back temporarily, or someone writing a patch for XFDcloser. Looks like an easy patch. I'll try to review it once it's written. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:06, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I've already readded the header (apologies for not making that more clear), though I object to making it temporary -- that section has been there since we reorganised the page a half-dozen years ago. Primefac (talk) 15:17, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I saw the issue yesterday I think but didn't notice it before (but wasn't keeping too much attention recently). I also don't close discussions so wouldn't have seen it right away. Gonnym (talk) 11:15, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like it's fixed already but I noticed that here this went into the ready for deletion section when I closed it as orphan. HurricaneZeta^C 15:06, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I mean, it got fixed four hours ago and your diff is from four days ago. Primefac (talk) 15:19, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Playing catch up here... But looks like this is all on me for deleting the Meta heading! Facepalm That's on me!! Sorry folks!! Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 16:27, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

So this definitely appears fixed. Sorry again as this was all caused by my removal of the Meta heading! No clue why I did that.... Lesson learned! User:Novem Linguae really appreciate your quick response to my query here! Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 17:06, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Sure no worries. Fixed. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:22, 17 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]