Xenharmonic Wiki talk:Bugs

Bugs affecting the functionality of the Xenharmonic Wiki can be reported and discussed here. When bug reports are finished (fixed or closed), they will be removed from here and added to Xenharmonic Wiki talk:Finished bugs.

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Move Spanish pages to es.xen.wiki (now moved, but what about files?)

Páginas_en_español - i rounded up all the es pages i could find (not many) and linked them all here. Perhaps these could be moved to es.xen.wiki? Spt3125 (talk) 01:30, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Also: 日本語のページ_(pages_in_Japanese) Spt3125 (talk) 01:59, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Yes, we mentioned this on the Facebook forums here. Basically, the Spanish pages should be spun off and merged into es.xen.wiki. It would also be good to move the "Purdal" pages from purdal.xen.wiki into es.xen.wiki. The Japanese pages should also be spun off into jp.xen.wiki. But we will need someone who speaks these languages to lead the process; I know no Japanese at all and only know basic Spanish. If you would like to help with this, we would be very grateful! Mike Battaglia (talk) 06:30, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

I'm happy to help, but would need some guidance on the best way to proceed (not sure how to move a page, etc.) I can read Japanese just enough to do something basic like this; Spanish a bit better, but i'm far from fluent in either... Spt3125 (talk) 02:12, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

I will be happy to help here, Japanese as well as Spanish. (Don't know so much of both, but sure enough to create/edit/move pages, already done that in the old xenwiki.) (hstraub)(talk)

User:hstraub, User:Spt3125 -- can you compile a list of pages that need to be moved to es? Then I can mass export them all at once and re-import them there. Also, should we talk about this here, or on FB? Mike Battaglia (talk) 16:23, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Mike, the page Páginas_en_español is that list (unless i've missed any pages, which is certainly possible). Happy to discuss on FB if you prefer. Spt3125 (talk) 21:40, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Scott -- OK, this is probably close enough to get started. I need to do some infra cleanup first, but this will make it simple if those pages are really all of the correct ones... Mike Battaglia (talk) 18:42, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Or maybe they are intended to be in purdal:, which is also Spanish? PiotrGrochowski (talk) 08:50, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Purdal was a spinoff wiki designed by one of our Spanish-speaking members -- I believe User:Osmiorisbendi (this is Tutim?) as a unit of interval measure that is different from cents. It hasn't seen widespread adoption, but we thought that it would be good to archive before Wikispaces goes down. It should probably be translated into English, but for now it would be at least be good to merge into the main Spanish Wiki. Mike Battaglia (talk) 18:42, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

EDIT - I have moved the pages that were at Páginas_en_español. I have a summary (in English, not Spanish) here: https://es.xen.wiki/w/ImportPages. The only thing missing is files, I think. Can we get these by hand? Mike Battaglia (talk) 19:19, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

Scala file pages

Pages that are scala files need to be wrapped in code blocks and have extra line breaks removed. (EDIT: yes, I will be doing this automatically -- stay "tuned" :) )Mike Battaglia (talk) 17:27, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

There are a whole lot of these pages! Is there a way to do this (semi-)automatically? Or at least to generate a list of, say, all pages that contain ".scl"? To complicate matters further, some pages contain multiple .scl files (and no other content). Another option (not sure if better or worse) would be to transfer these .scl-only pages to actual files. Thoughts? I'm happy to help, just not sure of the best way to proceed... Spt3125 (talk) 03:19, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I'll be doing this automatically, it's on my list -- no way we're doing this by hand and this is a simple regex job. Edited above to make clearer... -- Mike Battaglia (talk)

These pages have use in people clicking Random page and seeing random interesting tunings. PiotrGrochowski (talk) 04:22, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

It may be worth looking into excluding the Scala files from Random page results, maybe using something like Extension:ExcludeRandom. --Tyler (talk) 13:03, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

But whyyyy? The fanmade tunings only make Special:Random even better, inspiring people to use the tunings! PiotrGrochowski (talk) 13:05, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Heh, if you like having the Scala files in random pages, might as well keep them. But, just thinking, maybe we could create a "Random tuning" link right below it... :) Mike Battaglia (talk) 13:48, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

How could we have split random page generators in MediaWiki? PiotrGrochowski (talk) 16:27, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

We could put them in a category like "Scala files", as User:Spt3125 suggests, and then there are MediaWiki extensions like this that let you get a random page from a category. Mike Battaglia (talk) 06:23, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, I misread your comment and thought it was a complaint. Ignore me. Tyler (talk) 13:51, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks Mike! If that regex job can include adding a category such as "Scala files" or "scl" to those pages, that would be very useful i think. Some pages already have these ("tags" from Wikispaces), but many do not. Spt3125 (talk) 00:44, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Random thought: what about moving them to, say, scl.xen.wiki? Not sure if this would be good or bad...? Spt3125 (talk) 00:44, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Making a whole new wiki would be a lot of infrastructure work - would be much easier to just make a category for them, as you mention. Shouldn't be too difficult with regex, just a lot of other stuff to get finished first... Mike Battaglia (talk) 06:23, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

If we want to go this route, maybe it makes more sense to remove them as pages, and upload them as files? Essentially these .scl things are config files for Scala, not wiki pages. There could be a wiki page which contains a directory of uploaded .scl files including descriptions, related pages, etc. Someone can always make a wiki page about a scale which links to an .scl file, if they want to. Tyler (talk) 12:51, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Whatever we do, I think the main use case should be on making it easy for people to create and add new Scala files the "right way" (whatever we decide that is), in the future. Mike Battaglia (talk) 16:17, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Organized thought: how about handling of .scl in a way similar to .svg, and have a way of rendering it in-browser as a text list (and maybe even eventually audio clips)? This is also a vote against having .scl-only pages, and instead converting those to files. Xenjacob (talk) 21:06, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

We could do both of those. Automating audio will be more difficult, but possible -- I wrote a JavaScript MIDI library once upon a time I could dust off for this. We could also use the "subpage" feature and put them all at pages like scala/something.scl. Then we could create templates for the rest: so at the top of the page we put something like {{scala-start}} and at the end we put {{scala-end}}, and then create those templates to have whatever markup we like. Mike Battaglia (talk) 22:17, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

EDIT TO ABOVE: forget about subpages, it breaks pages with slashes in them (like 3/2). But categories and subcategories would work better for this than subpages anyway. Mike Battaglia (talk) 18:36, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Instead of using subpages, how about using a new namespace called "Scala"? The page URLs would be something like `w/Scala:12edo.scl`. If we don't convert the Scala pages to files (I think we should), this would also make it easy to exclude them from the Special:Random search. If you wanted a random Scala file page, you can specify the Scala namespace with `w/Special:Random/Scala`. Tyler (talk) 01:51, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

We need to do something with scala pages, they make it harder to search for pages in Special:ShortPages. PiotrGrochowski (info, talk, contribs) 06:22, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

"IMPORTDEBUG" category - changing external images

MediaWiki doesn't quite support external images in the same way that Wikispaces did. There are a few pages with external image links that need to be changed. More on the situation here: Category:IMPORTDEBUG - Change External Images - 07:23, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Can't have more than a certain number(?)/amount(?) of templates on a page

Apparently something goes awry when putting too much total template material or too many templates (not sure which, or more likely some combination of these) on one page. Specifically, more than 11 Lumatone EDO mapping instances causes a failure -- at first, a "Template include too large" error, and later no error but just a silent failure to display (leaving instead a link labeled Lumatone EDO mapping that would link to the generic Lumatone EDO mapping template). Any easy way to fix this? So far I have only seen this on my Keyboard Layout Lab user pages, but a couple of actual Lumatone mapping for ##edo pages are getting dangerously close. Lucius Chiaraviglio (talk) 06:08, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

There are indeed limits, you can read about them here: MediaWikiWiki: Manual:Template limits. The Lumatone mapping template makes a ton of calls to a template that manages each individual tile in the grid. Instead of increasing the limits, it might be wiser to design an implementation of the Lumatone mapping that does not require so many individual template calls, possibly by making more intensive use of modules instead, as that would probably overall result in better performance. --Fredg999 (talk) 13:14, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

Frequent error pages when trying to do anything

Lately, the whole site has been frequently popping up error pages that start with "Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties." followed by a whole bunch of error lines. This can occur when trying to do literally anything -- going to any page can do this (not even trying to post anything, although it happens when doing that as well). Is this a hosting provider problem, or anything that it is possible to do something about? Lucius Chiaraviglio (talk) 05:28, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

It seems to be caused by excessive crawling by web scrapers. User:Tyler Henthorn (sysadmin) is currently applying Cloudflare mitigation and is keeping an eye on the issue. --Fredg999 (talk) 17:27, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, this is an internet-wide problem caused by the insatiable hunger of the AI companies for stealing everyone's data to put in their training models. Multiple forums I'm on have also had their view counts go through the roof recently without a corresponding increase in actual posts and had to implement anti-bot measures. It's not going to get better until the AI bubble bursts. Yourmusic Productions (talk) 18:21, 10 September 2025 (UTC)

Bug in interpreting certain characters in change comments

I edited the Intervals table for 84edo to add links to the intervals, by copying the Wiki source for the section to a text file on my computer, using the "sed" command on it to do the actual editing (took less time to learn to use "sed" than to do all that by hand), and then copying the output file back into the article section. Then I decided to paste the command into the change comment so that people could see what I did to repeat it for themselves on other tables (if they have Unixoid operating systems or at least the command sets thereof). First, here is the full "sed" command:

sed -E "s#[0-9]*/[0-9]*#\[\[&\]\]#g" 84EDO\ intervals.txt > 84EDOintervals.txt

Instead of having the full unmodified "sed" command (as above) in the change comment, this produced the following strange result in the page history:

curprev 2025-10-29T02:50:34 Lucius Chiaraviglio talk contribs 13,750 bytes +536 →Intervals: sed -E "s#[0-9]*/[0-9]*#
Misplaced &
\]#g" 84EDO\ intervals.txt > 84EDOintervals.txt undo


This indicates that whatever processes the change comments (even after storage, and including both the page history and the watchlist) doesn't treat everything you paste in as just literal text. To avoid having bad things happen, it should treat everything you paste into the change comment as literal text.

Another example.just added in the history for 55edo (editing the Intervals table again):

sed -E "s#[0-9]+/[0-9]+#\[\[&\]\]#g" 55EDOintervals.txt > 55EDOintervals.new.txt

This produced similar output in the 55edo history.

Added: Lucius Chiaraviglio (talk) 07:04, 29 October 2025 (UTC)
Last modified: Lucius Chiaraviglio (talk) 08:55, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

seems bad: sed -E "s#[0-9]+/[0-9]+#\[\[&\]\]#g" => sed -E "s#[0-9]+/[0-9]+#\[\[&\]\]#g"

seems good: sed -E "s#[0-9]+/[0-9]+#\\[\\[&\\]\\]#g" => sed -E "s#[0-9]+/[0-9]+#\\[\\[&\\]\\]#g"

not only in text but also in comment --Dummy index (talk) 14:23, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

A way to avoid escaping character by character (with limitations): \(\verb%sed -E "s#[0-9]+/[0-9]+#\[\[&\]\]#g"%\) => \(\verb%sed -E "s#[0-9]+/[0-9]+#\[\[&\]\]#g"%\)

We are discussing how to handle this on Discord, so please wait a little longer.--Dummy index (talk) 12:30, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

We are planning to change the specification so that equation rendering in the edit comments on each page's History/diffs and Special:RecentChanges is stopped. This will make raw comments visible, including past edit comments. We will announce this here and on Wikifuture, and plan to make the change in about a week. We welcome your opinions. --Dummy index (talk) 16:02, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

Isn't this something you want to do anyway for security reasons? Lucius Chiaraviglio (talk) 21:01, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

I hadn't thought that far. However, I do think it makes sense to strictly regulate what can be brought to RecentChanges. More than that, I'm concerned about whether it's related to the recent lag issues. (I wonder if we should use Cloudflare's MathJax instead of jsDelivr?)--Dummy index (talk) 13:50, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

On the one hand, we're already using CloudFlare for the "prove you're human" checkbox to combat the AI scrapers that were DDoS'ing the site in all but name. On the other hand, at least as of last night, the AI scrapers seem to have figured out how to get past that, because the very frequent "unable to access the database" errors started appearing again, so maybe different medicine is needed. Lucius Chiaraviglio (talk) 15:31, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties.

Every once in a while, I get this message saying the site is experiencing technical difficulties, and cannot access the database.--Overthink (talk) 20:16, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

That's part of what I experience often as well — see "#Frequent error pages when trying to do anything" above. I also get frequent Gateway Timeout errors, often followed by the "technical difficulties" error messages after retrying several times. Lucius Chiaraviglio (talk) 22:58, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

. . . . And this problem has been getting a LOT worse in the last week or so. It used to be just an occasional few minutes of this glitch on some days, and now it is much of the time every day. Lucius Chiaraviglio (talk) 22:21, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

I don't want to jinx it, but earlier tonight, in the middle of yet another string of these glitches, I got one of those annoying "prove you're a human" checkboxes, and I clicked it, and all of a sudden the site started working. So maybe those things actually work? (for now . . . .). Lucius Chiaraviglio (talk) 11:48, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

AI scrapers were paralysing the site, so we adopted a stricter verification policy. —FloraC (talk) 10:43, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

The problem is back. I think the AI scrapers figured out how to click the button. Lucius Chiaraviglio (talk) 07:51, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

Maybe it would be a good idea to temporarily block any IP addresses that open pages too much, for example more than 25 pages within 10 seconds.--Overthink (talk) 23:46, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

That sounds plausible. Also, for what it's worth, Memory Alpha uses the kind of Captcha that gives you semi-obfuscated letters/digits that you have to enter, and while that is even more annoying than the CloudFlare checkbox, so far I haven't run into database access failure on there. Lucius Chiaraviglio (talk) 01:34, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Diffs from watchlist

When I clicked the diff for Dummy Index's last edit of this page from my watchlist, the wiki suddenly turned into the current wikipedia style, and the username in the top-right corner displayed as "FloraC". Another time I checked a diff and it suddenly turned into the mobile view style. What is this bug?--Overthink (talk) 02:55, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

Something like this just happened again. I checked the revision history for Pentatonic Functional Just System and the navigation bar at the top said "Login" and "Request Account", even though I was logged in, and it displayed properly after leaving the page. When I went back to that page, it became broken again.--Overthink (talk) 03:09, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

Similar (but different in detail) weird things were happening to me when displaying history (accessed from Watchlist or directly from affected page), but only on certain pages (now I can't remember which ones, and it wasn't consistent, with the ability to display 2 different weird styles). Lucius Chiaraviglio (talk) 08:21, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

Previously, when I tried to create a discussion page while logged in, a page appeared saying I didn't have permission because I was not logged in, and I was unable to create the page for a while. (If I viewed other pages, I was indeed logged in.) It seems like the CDN or something was oddly caching the page. --Dummy index (talk) 13:29, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

Many users reportedly experience this. I suspect it is the same problem as the delayed edit history issue. —FloraC (talk) 10:43, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

Edits not showing up in edit history

Sometimes when I edit a page, the edit history doesn’t show. Take my userpage for example. I just edited it to describe myself a bit, but my recent edit doesn’t show up in edit history at all. hotcrystal0 13:26, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

As of 2026-01-08T14:45, I see 3 edits, 1 each dated 2025-12-19, 2025-12-28, and 2026-01-08. What's missing? Lucius Chiaraviglio (talk) 19:47, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

I see only two edits (the 12/19 and 12/28 ones), but for some reason the third one shows up when I use mobile view. hotcrystal0 21:25, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

I suspect that your browser displays a cached version of the history page, if a recent edit doesn't show up although it shows on other devices or on other views. Try a hard refresh (e.g. Ctrl-F5) or clearing your browser cache to see if it shows then. --Fredg999 (talk) 22:12, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

On the page User:Overthink/Chords of pajara, when I check the revision history only the oldest three revisions appear, and both a hard refresh and clearing my browser cache don't work. The page has been stuck like this for over a week now. I can still manually make all the revisions by using the to date filter or adding "&useskin=vector" to the URL. --Overthink (talk) 00:18, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

Check the username when you look at the edit history page, the page on 176/175 is having this issue and it shows up as if you're logged in as DotuXil. -- VectorGraphics (talk) 23:36, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

Same on my end. This seems to be a server-side issue. --Overthink (talk) 04:05, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

I made an edit to 22edo a few minutes ago. Many recent edits don't show up in the edit history, and the to date filter reveals more, but still doesn't show my latest edit. Adding "&useskin=vector" to the URL, however, still works to make the latest revision appear. --Overthink (talk) 04:08, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

HTTP 403 errors when previewing edits

When I use the auto-preview option in the source editor, sometimes it returns an HTTP 403 error instead of previewing the page. Previously, I opened/refreshed another xenwiki page and the cloudflare verification always showed up, and after it finished the edit preview box started working again. Now, refreshing another page doesn't show the verification message, and the preview still returns HTTP 403. Strangely, when I try to edit a different page, the preview section does show properly.--Overthink (talk) 03:36, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

Errors when saving edits

I often get the error message:

Sorry! We could not process your edit due to a loss of session data.

You might have been logged out. Please verify that you're still logged in and try again. If it still does not work, try logging out and logging back in, and check that your browser allows cookies from this site.

Usually it works after clicking "save changes" again, but it's still quite annoying. --Overthink (talk) 07:01, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

I see the same thing. It occurs more often when I take a long time before previewing or saving changes, but occasionally it happens even in a short editing session. And while it usually works after saving changes again, occasionally it loses some or all of my changes. Lucius Chiaraviglio (talk) 11:05, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

Since I last posted, this has started happening frequently even in short editing sessions. Lucius Chiaraviglio (talk) 03:13, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

Audio files from Wikimedia Commons

Why I try to add an audio file from Wikimedia Commons, it shows up as a link to the file instead. For example:

File:Primary triads in C just.mid

Please fix this issue. --Overthink (talk) 22:15, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

Editing sections returns to wrong section

For example, if I edit an "11-limit" section in a temperament data page, after clicking "save changes", it puts me at the first section that says "11-limit", instead of the one I was editing. This is a relatively minor issue, but I still believe it is important to take note of this. --Overthink (talk) 01:29, 21 March 2026 (UTC)