Last modified: 2013-11-30 05:51:01 UTC
"{{#target:User talk:Jimbo Wales}}" previously output a link to [[m:User talk:Jimbo Wales]] on Meta-Wiki. Very recently it began outputting nothing at all. Something is broken.
This appears to be specific to Meta-Wiki. Compare: * https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=6521064 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=583419676 Both contain the same content: "{{#target:User talk:Jimbo Wales}}". On the English Wikipedia, correct output: --- <p><a href="/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales" title="User talk:Jimbo Wales">User talk:Jimbo Wales</a></p> --- On Meta-Wiki, broken output: --- <div id="mw-content-text" lang="en" dir="ltr" class="mw-content-ltr"> <!-- NewPP limit report Parsed by mw1049 CPU time usage: 0.008 seconds Real time usage: 0.009 seconds Preprocessor visited node count: 3/1000000 Preprocessor generated node count: 14/1500000 Post‐expand include size: 0/2048000 bytes Template argument size: 0/2048000 bytes Highest expansion depth: 2/40 Expensive parser function count: 0/500 --> <!-- Saved in parser cache with key metawiki:pcache:idhash:141962-0!*!*!*!*!*!* and timestamp 20131126184712 --> </div> ---
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=MassMessage&diff=6476799&oldid=6466601
Continuing to poke at this with Bartosz's help... both metawiki and enwiki are running "1.23wmf4 (49ec115)" according to Special:Version. The MySQL versions are different, but I can't imagine that would be the issue here. Nothing in [[wikitech:SAL]] looks suspicious off-hand, though this is a very recent breakage.
(In reply to comment #2) > https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=6476799&oldid=6466601 Err, okay, so this is documented, yet still completely unexpected. What's going on here?
The 'massmessage-target' message was blanked (https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Massmessage-target&action=history), so that the output of the message can be controlled via the normal {{target}} template, which doesn't require editinterface to modify. There is probably a better way to do this though. The parserfunction still works, it just doesn't display any output.
(In reply to comment #5) > The parserfunction still works, it just doesn't display any output. Grahhh. Thank you for explaining. Overall, blanking [[m:MediaWiki:Massmessage-target]] is a terrible hack. One of its symptoms is that it results in #target failing silently. This needs further thought and a proper fix.
Ok, so now [[m:Template:target]] wraps around the #target parser function which displays [[m:Template:target/display]]. Using either the template or the parser function will work.
