This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:XFDcloser. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
The edit summary seems a bit screwy too, what with the inclusion of a broken [www.foo.com/nowiki link], which usually means someone handwrote the edit summary and forgot how links work. signed, Rosguilltalk14:26, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
THanks for flagging @CX Zoom. @Rosguill I am 100% guilty of forgetting how links (and formatting!) work, but I closed it with the script. Do links not work within that? I don't typically include them but in this case where I wasn't the nom who had withdrawn, I thought it helpful. Let me know if you need me to troubleshoot anything else. StarMississippi23:04, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
I mean technically it should not have disappeared completely from the AfD page while it appeared just fine at the article's talk page, despite both the actions being handled by a single click of script. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})23:20, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
I suspect that putting either a hyperlink or a wikilink into the close rationale is what broke this. Given that the withdrawal is clearly on the page I'm not quire sure why it would be necessary to link to the diff itself on the word withdrawn anyway... I guess it's not quite GIGO but it's "unexpected behaviour leads to things breaking". Primefac (talk) 10:16, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Trying to find the note where someone asked me to make nom withdrawn closes more clear, but can't now. Happy to do those with a post close edit. Thanks both! StarMississippi14:10, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
My suggestion would be to add the explanatory note in the Rationale section (which allows for a boatload of exposition if necessary). Ideally the word in the custom close box should be 1-2 words only. Primefac (talk) 14:15, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
Oh that makes total sense and I'll happily take the "duh trout" for not doing that in the first place. I'm not sure why I linked it in the outcome to begin with. StarMississippi14:59, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
"Not yet 7 days" warning should be right away
Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
"Not yet 7 days" warning is currently after you go through a couple screens and try to finalize the closing of the XFD. (In my case for RFD.) I suggest moving this check and notification to the very beginning, when you first open XFDCloser, so as to reduce wasted time. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:31, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
I am not disagreeing with your proposal (it's a good idea), but the close buttons are colour-coded to indicate whether enough time has passed... Primefac (talk) 11:46, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
Preferences should let you set "Add edited pages to your watchlist" to limited duration
Latest comment: 2 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion
There is a setting in the preferences screen called "Add edited pages to your watchlist". The choices are "always", "never", and something else. I propose adding some limited durations to this, such as "1 week", "1 month", etc. I would personally want to watchlist these pages for about a week or a month, and after that I'd like them to drop off my watchlist to avoid clutter. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:19, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
Oh, right. Duh. Thanks. For some reason I thought it was stored somewhere else. The third option, by the way, is "default" (which is set in the generic Special:Preferences). Now that I think about it, that option should have some granularity as well, given that it's either "always" or "never", but that's a phab issue not an XFDC issue. Primefac (talk) 13:56, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
Agree largely that this would be a nice thing to have; I've definitely taken to short-watch-listing things like this just to make sure there isn't any weird fallout. Primefac (talk) 13:56, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
CfD relisting date bug?
Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Some recent CfD relistings appear to be linking to the wrong page (example). Could you check if this is an error with XFDcloser or something else? —Paul_012 (talk) 07:12, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
@Paul 012, I'd says that's a bug with XFDCloser. The relisting link is correct, but the discussion is moved to the wrong date (the 18th) and the summary also links to the 18th. I suspect the relsit link is only correct (the 19th) because it substitutes a template, instead of using what it thinks is the current day. —Qwerfjkltalk08:21, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
This seems to have disappeared from my screen completely. Any ideas why? Skin compatibility, withdrawn, affected by other scripts, perhaps? Unfortunately, DannyS127 hasn't been around for a bit. Hope he's well. SN5412917:08, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Qwerfjkl for looking in... wierdly, it seems to have appeared again since last night. I spent a lot of time messing around un/reinstalling stuff, and refreshing, and using different versions, and logging in and out, so among all those things I guess I must've clear something! Don't ask me how though :) SN5412911:38, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
Two cats in the same action loses one, and processes the other
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I'm wondering if there's an easier way to implement a "draftify" closure at AfD than what I'm currently doing. Ideally, this would involve a) moving the page and associated talk page to draftspace, b) removing AfD templates and logging the old AfD on the talk, and c) the option of unlinking backlinks, for topics deemed temporarily not notable. If it's not currently a feature, it would be an extremely useful one.
Also, given that this page is likely to be a long list of requests and/or complaints, I wanted to express my appreciation for this tool, and the enormous time savings it has created. Vanamonde (Talk)20:37, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
To add to this, I'd also suggest it removes any project quality ratings (can leave the importance ones) as part of this process. Thanks. -Kj cheetham (talk) 10:30, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
Multiple retargets for batch RfD not working
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Steps to replicate the issue:
Try closing a batch nomination at RfD using XFDcloser and select the option for "multiple results". For one of the pages, select "retarget" and try to type the name of the new target page.
What happens?:
When prompted for a new target, the field freezes and does not allow typing words. Typing certain letters causes the result to be altered (e.g., 'k' for keep), while others have no effect. Attempting to abort the "multiple results" closure keeps all fields frozen, i.e., a blanket "retarget" closure is not possible, and it is impossible to add an additional rationale following one of the default results. It is necessary to refresh the browser page to unfreeze XFDcloser.
What should have happened instead?:
It should be possible to specify independent pages to which each nominated page will be retargeted, and proceed with the close. Any issues at this step also should not affect alternate closure options when backtracking.
I mean, the original source code is a bunch of different js files that have to be packed together into this one file and transpiled to work here. I don't think turning off minifying would help much when the code isn't meant to be read in this compiled form. Galobtter (talk) 02:45, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
Is there even a way to configure a module bundler like webpack or rollup to pack multiple JS files into a single unminified file? Back when I was working on a similar project in 2020-21, the only way was through debug modes in which webpack would still inject lots of boilerplate code which aren't optimal for production, and can make a large gadget like this approach the 2 MB size limit. I doubt if things would have changed since then. Although the JS ecosystem is fast-moving, there is little demand for tools that generate unminified production builds, as the wider web doesn't use ResourceLoaders. – SD0001 (talk) 13:27, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
In this edit, the only link in a "See also" section was removed but the heading remained. Preferably, it would remove the heading in that case. ~Bobogoobo (talk) 05:37, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
Are XFDcloser links supposed to show for RFD/TFD/etc entries that are hatted?
Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion
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)
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)
Problem with relisting
Latest comment: 2 years ago10 comments4 people in discussion
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
XFDcloser links vanishing in old skins
Latest comment: 2 years ago13 comments5 people in discussion
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
@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)
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)
Sometimes it does not edit the category or category talk pages at all, e.g. 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)
Top request: For a Keep result, please populate the Action parameter on the talk page, e.g. "rename" was needed at . Although it sometimes does this, e.g. .
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)
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)
Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
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)
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)
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)
Evad37 feature ideas
Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Possible future features
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.
When closing as "redirect", remove parameters from the WikiProject talk page templates (so they can auto-categorize)
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.
Latest comment: 1 year ago6 comments3 people in discussion
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)
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)
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)
Latest comment: 1 year ago11 comments2 people in discussion
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Actually, don't worry about the screenshots. I was able to reproduce this just now. Let me dig into it and I'll get back to ya. –Novem Linguae (talk) 11:58, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
[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)
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)
{{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)
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)
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)
@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: the workflows are identical at this stage in the process: XFDC only closes the discussion, and nothing else – not even deleting the page. Non-admins list their closures at WT:CFDW, but that is facilitated by a separate script (User:Qwerfjkl/scripts/CFDlister). Admins have to list the discussions directly at WP:CFDW, but that is not handled by XFDC. HouseBlaster(talk•he/they) 23:34, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
@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)
XFDcloser creating erroneous edit summaries and linking to Undefined after AfD/PROD closures
Latest comment: 1 year ago14 comments4 people in discussion
@Steel1943. Have you noticed any pattern to this (for example links with spaces, links in a certain namespace, etc.), or does it always happen when XFDcloser removes any wikilink? –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:08, 23 September 2024 (UTC)
@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)
@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)
They are probably independent of each other. An undefined in XFDcloser's edit summary is almost surely a bug in XFDcloser, not Twinkle. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:50, 25 September 2024 (UTC)
@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)
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)
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)
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)
Rfd-NPP not recognized
Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion
May be unrelated, but much of the time closing as Keep at RfD does not do anything to the redirect page. I have to manually remove the deletion notice and tags. I'm on Vector Legacy (2010). Jay 💬07:05, 3 November 2024 (UTC)
See these edits: ; these edits occurred on 5 November 2024, but XFDcloser relisted the discussion on the 4 November 2024 (1 day earlier) page. Steel1943 (talk) 18:26, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
Yep, annoying stuff like that is why I leave my time preference on Wikipedia as UTC. Prevents a whole lotta garbagio, and is probably the easiest workaround. Steel1943 (talk) 20:39, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
Would this still be the case if I made the edits on November 5 at 10:20 AM my time? I can understand this occurring if it were November 4 my time but November 5 UTC, but it seems odd if both are on the same day. Significa liberdade (she/her) (talk) 21:24, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
Can't say for certain. This gadget has been wonky for a while, and it hasn't been maintained for a few years. Only thing most have been doing is reporting bugs and figuring out the workarounds and using those so the tool will work for them. For me, I have left my global time zone set as UTC, even though it's not my actual time zone, and I have yet to have any odd issue happen with tools or gadgets based on timestamps. Steel1943 (talk) 22:34, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
Figure I'd add to this: Since this tool is widely used, though not recently maintained at all, in 2022, an editor made some REALLY great updates to {{Rfd2}}, but ... they had to be reverted due to how this tool works and since there was no one available to update this tool to work for {{Rfd2}}'s new functionality at the time. 😫 Steel1943 (talk) 22:40, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
XFDcloser adds |2=[Article Name] to RFD templates
Latest comment: 1 year ago3 comments2 people in discussion
It ensures the link in the RFD/core template will go to the correct section of the initial nomination date subpage, especially with nominations with multiple redirects. Steel1943 (talk) 18:31, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
Maybe it used to do that, but no longer? Using Scottish Nosepickers as an example... Both before and after the relist change (2=Scottish Nose-pickers), the RfD link still just uses the page title as anchor (#Scottish_Nosepickers). And the anchor already works regardless because every nom in a multi-nom has its own "span-id" element. Hyphenation Expert (talk) 23:49, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
Add draftify result?
Latest comment: 1 year ago6 comments4 people in discussion
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)
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)
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)
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)
The edit summary says "removing links / list items". The "removing list items" part makes it seem like it might be intentionally programmed this way. Interesting. If so, I think just always de-linking might be a bit safer. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:21, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for that link. I didn't realize that each list removal prompted the user to manually approve it. It should be safe to keep this feature. Closing without action –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:25, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
What's the steps to reproduce? Do you just hit close (not quickClose), try to close all as delete, then it gives a "Toomanyvalues" error message in the user interface without doing anything? –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:35, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
Dou you see the buttons? I didn't click close and. What I see is that the XFDcloser buttons are missing. They show for a fraction of a second and are then replaced by the message "toomanyvalues error retrieving page information (reload the page to try again)". Which is due to too many pages being listed, supposedly. I tried to look what the max number of links is but couldn't find this information. —Alalch E.22:56, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
As a workaround, maybe have an admin close it on your behalf. If you want, you can give me a close result and rationale, and I'll try to do the close for you, and then we can edit in your signature to the close message. What would you like the result and close rationale to be? –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:20, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
Oh great, thanks. Everything is fine then. I have no intent of closing. I just started this MfD this way and then became worried about including too many pages basically, "breaking" XFCloser, and causing a potential hassle for an admin who would close. So I posted here to see what's up. —Alalch E.23:29, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
Latest comment: 1 year ago4 comments3 people in discussion
I noticed XFDcloser does not automatically remove deleted templates from articles when closing a TfD. Is there an option to do this, or does XFDcloser not yet support this feature? Ixfd64 (talk) 18:53, 2 February 2025 (UTC)
It's a decent idea, but removing transclusions of a template is not the same as simply unlinking backlinks. WP:TFDHalways has entries for templates that need removal, even the simple ones. While yes, there are occasions where straight-forward removal is acceptable (e.g. a navbox being deleted) I do not want to have to clean up after someone who accidentally deletes a template called on thousands of pages that needs either substing, a merge, or replacement. Keep listing things at the holding cell and let people who have the time to do the cleanup take care of it. Primefac (talk) 07:20, 4 February 2025 (UTC)
Latest comment: 1 year ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Let me start by saying this is probably my favorite gadget for Wikipedia. It has always worked perfectly for me until my recent closure of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vingtaine du Rondin. The gadget properly identified links to that article, but also mysteriously identified pages linking Roads in Jersey. I couldn't figure out why those links would be affected by the closing, so I thought I would mention it here. Let me know if I am missing something obvious. Mojo Hand(talk)16:19, 25 April 2025 (UTC)
Possibly because the redirect Roads in JerseyRoads in Jersey had two navboxes, one of which linked to Vingtaine du Rondin. I have since removed the navboxes as they shouldn't appear on redirect pages. I suspect that if you delete an article linked to from a redirect page, then the tool assumes that it redirects to the article being deleted, even if it's not. It's still an error though. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})17:57, 25 April 2025 (UTC)
Tests failing + general question about best venue for technical questions
Latest comment: 1 year ago5 comments2 people in discussion
@Novem Linguae What's the best place to bug you with questions I have about XfD closer? I'm taking a stab at implementing a few of the outstanding issues and it looks like there's a pair of tests failing before I've made any changes, and the talk page seems like a poor fit but so does github. (My main question is whether the GetRelistInfo tests failing is a known issue or represents a likely problem with my setup, but I expect I may have more unless you tell me you're not up for fielding questions about this given then immense number of technical things you're listed as the maintainer for, which would be totally reasonable.) Rusalkii (talk) 21:57, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
I cloned it, ran npm run build without making any changes, hit an error (xfdcloser/dist/loader-dev.js no such file or directory), ran npm run test, and got all tests passing except
1) GetRelistInfo
gets relist wikitexts for TfD:
TypeError: Cannot add property user, object is not extensible
at Context.<anonymous> (test/testTaskGetRelistInfo.js:117:3)
at processImmediate (node:internal/timers:483:21)
2) GetRelistInfo
gets relist wikitexts for TfD, multiple pages:
TypeError: Cannot add property user, object is not extensible
at Context.<anonymous> (test/testTaskGetRelistInfo.js:133:3)
at processImmediate (node:internal/timers:483:21)
<syntaxhighlight> or <pre> are good for multi-line blocks:) Will try to reproduce this if I get time and let you know what happens. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:30, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
Using arrow keys when doing a multi-result close should not change the results
Latest comment: 1 year ago4 comments2 people in discussion
This is extremely frustrating behavior that makes it far more difficult than necessary to write/edit a long rationale. Elli (talk|contribs) 19:41, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
That regression was so bad, typing anything on the second screen of the wizard too changes the results on the first screen. I wanted to add an rcat for one of the entries being closed as a redirect, I selected "C" for the capitalization rcat, and it changed all my selections in the first page to "Custom". Logged out, logged in to Chrome, repeated the steps, and it went through fine. Jay 💬05:39, 11 May 2025 (UTC)
Empty noinclude
Latest comment: 11 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion
It looks like XFDcloser leaves back an empty <noinclude></noinclude> when removing the templates from the page in question. I'm pretty sure this serves no purpose and should be fixed. Laura240406 (talk) 13:59, 29 June 2025 (UTC)
Close the CFD as "keep", "no consensus", or "custom"
Choose "remove nomination templates, tag talk pages" in the "actions" dropdown
What happens: Talk:Edit will be tagged as if it was under discussion, in addition to the categories being discussed. You can see Special:PageHistory/Talk:Edit for some examples.
What should happen: Just the categories should be tagged.
I started seeing the problem on Sep 9 or 10 (see WT:Redirects for discussion#XFDcloser is broken), but it may have been there from earlier. Typing into the Result Summary or Rationale fields of the XFDcloser is not possible. It treats characters as keyboard shortcuts and does other stuff. Apparently it happens for Multiple results only. Jay 💬06:54, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
Also typing in something in the RCAT page of the wizard messes up the earlier result selections. I typed R and all my results went back to Retarget . Jay 💬06:56, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
This happens on Firefox which I use. This doesn't happen with Chrome. But today, I see that the Multiple results option is fully broken. The "Next" button is not getting enabled. Jay 💬08:36, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
So any time I have to close a RfD with multiple results, I log out of Firefox, log in to Chrome, and do the close.Whatever change was made to this tool in Sep 2022 should be reverted. Jay 💬13:48, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
I had this same problem – I had to copy/paste my rationale, etc. from a separate page. When I typed "S", everything went to "Soft redirect". Can someone please fix this? It was quite annoying Edward-Woodrow:) [talk]19:58, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
Today I closed an RfD where one of the entries was Delete and the other was Retarget, but the delete entry was not actually deleted but retargeted to "null". Jay 💬14:28, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
Latest comment: 9 months ago6 comments6 people in discussion
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. LizRead!Talk!18:37, 25 August 2025 (UTC)
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)
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)
Latest comment: 8 months ago13 comments3 people in discussion
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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. —Qwerfjkltalk09:28, 11 September 2025 (UTC)
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)
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? —Qwerfjkltalk20:56, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
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)
AfD tags not being removed
Latest comment: 8 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
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)
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village Pump (proposals) § Bump XfD heading sizes. Primefac (talk) 20:22, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
Fixed.
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)
Closing without action –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:25, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
. Jay 💬 06:56, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
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)