MediaWiki talk:Badtitletext

Badtitletext is shown when a user requested a page with an invalid name.
This interface message or skin may also be documented on MediaWiki.org or translatewiki.net.
The page forms part of the MediaWiki interface, and can only be edited by administrators and interface editors.
To request a change to the page, add {{edit fully-protected}} to this page, followed by a description of your request. Consider announcing discussions you add here at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) to bring more people to the discussion.

Wikipedia:

Wikipedia entry gives general information about Wikipedia so I entered [[Wikipedia:]] hoping for a list of items in the Wikipedia: space, but it results in this page. I am looking to sort out the situation where Covenant (theology) info got deleted and the page now redirects to Covenant Theology which contains theological information about covenants from the perspective of a subset of Christianity.

If you want all pages in the Wikipedia namespace, go here. This makes use of Special:Prefixindex. --l E ☺N2323 13:34, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bug

There seems to be some kind of article writing bug relating to the 'Bad Title' error page, when you search for a bad title (e.g. %20) and it says you can edit it, something that needs fixing? - Lep.

The page Bad title has been created and protected to avoid recreation, due to a bug in the MediaWiki software. Note to administrators - please do not delete until the bug is fixed. – AB CD 14:14, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Now that wikipedia supports UTF8, this page may be unnecessary. The properly spelled pages can be created, and the wrong ones deleted. For example, KroÄ�ehlavy is no longer necessary, as I have created Kročehlavy — Chris Capoccia ^T⁄_C June 28, 2005 18:27 (UTC)

It's still possible to get to this page, for example with [1]. dbenbenn | talk 29 June 2005 01:25 (UTC)

Hy, I found a strange page that appears as [[Ä¹¦ç»�]] in Category:China (the last link). I can't get thre and check what it is about. gbog July 3, 2005 04:17 (UTC)

You can get Bad title from [2] which is a link from Special:Whatlinkshere/Panathinaikos_FC: someone will eventually delete the redirect page, but there may be similar cases. --Henrygb 22:00, 19 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I recently got here, by being on a history page of an article at svwiki and just exchanging "sv" in the url to "en". This is my normal way of travelling between the two wikis. The error message is not redundant. (I am kind of surprised this page exists, though. I believed this kind of things were taken care of by stuff in the namespaces MediaWiki and/or Special. / Habj 12:46, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

[[User:��]] (%8F several times) links to here. Can users make accounts that link here? Or does it only link here because this was a Willy on Wheels sock? Adam ^Rock 22:23, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

I just got here following this diff from the RC page to an article that were deleted about at the same time as I clicked the diff. Shanes 04:33, 30 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

On The Homestar Runner Wiki I searched Wikipedia:HRwiki: clicked the create this page button and got to this page. 64.78.69.112 20:07, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On H*R, if you start a page with Wikipedia: they've got it configured to transwii it to here, but that is a Bad Title because it has a colon (:) in the name. -- xaosflux ^Talk/_CVU 23:01, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't this be Wikipedia:Bad title

Otherwise it just looks like a bad entry, doesn't it? Citizen Premier

This page exists because the software sends people here. It shouldn't, but since it does (see above), there needs to be a page telling people something has gone wrong. --Henrygb 21:46, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If we move this page to Wikipedia:Bad title, but leave the redirect in place, it should, in theory, still work. - SimonP 18:55, 12 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I tested it, and it actually seems like this page is no longer needed at all. The error message does not actually display the text in this page, rather it displays MediaWiki:Badtitletext. - SimonP 19:09, 12 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Which is sad, because it makes it hard to reach this talk page and record the error --Henrygb 22:00, 12 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

No, it still seems to pretend to be here. Click here and you can see that while the page itself isn't displayed, the discussion, history, etc. are all for this page. - SimonP 22:31, 12 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to be right on the ugly Monobook skin - but it is no longer true on Classic --Henrygb 00:19, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

bugzilla:03970

Posted: bugzilla:03970 – PAGENAME "bad title" in different namespaces
Regards Gangleri | Th | T 09:19, 15 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Page [[|]]

I want make a redirect : [[|]] (or |)=> Vertical_bar . thanks Yug

Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(technical_restrictions)#Characters_not_allowed_at_all_in_page_titles says you cannot. But you could try ¦, | or | in the article. The first of these (based on ¦) goes to Pipe (computing) while the other two using vertical bars for piped links go to Vertical_bar. For some reason http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/| (using a little unicode) is seen as &.--Henrygb 20:40, 5 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Protection

I've protected this page as a pseudo MediaWiki: page. xaosflux ^Talk/_CVU 05:27, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One of my preferred search options is

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20____ >,

along with

< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search/ >.

These do seem to work for me.

Hopiakuta 00:54, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

< http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%20%20%20%20____ >.

Hopiakuta 03:14, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Idea for Consideration

^{25 June 2006 04:47} Ste4k wrote: Perhaps it would be a good idea to have the definition/purpose of the various namespaces themselves be what comes up rather than "Bad Title". A couple pointers to the documentation would be nice as well. Catch you later, I am off to try and find what I was looking for in the first place. Thanks. :)

Pseduo-wikimedia page

Is this actually a psuedo-MediaWiki page? Quite an oversight to have this exist outside the MediaWiki: namespace. Kevin_b_er 04:01, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No. In fact, it's a bug. The true page is at MediaWiki:Badtitletext. --cesarb 04:25, 12 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bad grammar

Should be "...was invalid, empty, or an incorrectly linked..." --Ihope127 00:19, 5 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree, "The requested page title was invalid, empty, an incorrectly linked inter-language or inter-wiki title, or contained unsupported characters." is a single comma-separated list with a single "or" between the last two items - which is gramatically correct. I've separated the clauses below:

"...was invalid", "empty", "an incorrectly linked inter-language or inter-wiki title", or "contained unsupported characters.". Thryduulf 02:05, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know that it's actually broken grammar, but it is bad parallelism; the first three phrases are predicative adjectives or noun phrases (at least almost parallel), but the fourth phrase is instead a verb phrase. Moreover, the fact that "was" is not repeated before "empty" and "an incorrectly..." implies that it should apply to every element of the list, but "or was contained unsupported characters" is obviously not what is meant. --Tardis 16:25, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

i typed in "create article"

and ended up here?

this should link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Starting_a_new_page

Bigdan201 01:44, 24 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. We obviously want Create article to be protected, because of this, but if someone is typing "create article" into the search box, they're obviously either a newbie trying to create a new article, or just someone curious as to what's at that location. We usually want to avoid cross-namespace redirects, so I would recommend making a soft redirect to Help:Starting_a_new_page. Subpage is an example of a similar soft redirect. Dave6 20:50, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Possible to link to history/deletion log?

Sometimes when a new page has been created, and is visible in the recent changes, clicking on it links here even if the page exists, making it difficult to know whether the page has been deleted already or not. Presumably this is caused by different databases updating at different times. Would it be possible (and also would it be useful?) to add a link to the page history and deletion log? —Snigbrook 20:38, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Requested correction

{{Editprotected}} Click here to see my requested minor edit. -- IRP ☎ 16:40, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Done. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:19, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Requested change

{{editprotected}} Can we change the link under "unsupported characters" from Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions) to Help:Page name#Invalid page names? The latter seems to give a more comprehensive treatement now.--Kotniski (talk) 09:07, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually that should perhaps refer to MediaWiki:Badtitletext, not this page (why do we have both pages anyway - what is the "bug in MediaWiki" that requires this one to exist?)--Kotniski (talk) 09:10, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Done I too am not sure of the issue or the reason that we need to keep this page. - Rjd0060 (talk) 18:11, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'll ask at the VPT.--Kotniski (talk) 18:28, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dead link

{{editprotected}} The link to Help:Page name#Invalid page names is no longer useful. The best target seems to be Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions), or possibly the short version at Wikipedia:Page name#Invalid page names. Algebraist 00:56, 11 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I added the short version, which has a link to the longer version. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:49, 11 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Internal links

{{editprotected}} Hello.

We should use <span class="plainlinks"></span> to remove the inaccurate external link icons from the internal links on this MediaWiki page. Please respond with your feedback. Thank you. 75.53.212.159 (talk) 00:11, 4 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Done, seems uncontroversial and useful - Hoo man (talk) 13:29, 7 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Article tab

Where is that tab? The error page itself is a special page and does not have one, the special tab links to the faulty page again. --194.118.198.243 (talk) 08:16, 9 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Yes indeed, please remove "If you tried to access a non-local interwiki page, you may be able to access that page by clicking the "article" tab on this page." from the message. — This, that and the other (talk) 01:33, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Done ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 20:12, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Protected edit request on 15 April 2014

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Please remove "* an attempt to follow a link to a diff for a page that has since been deleted;" since this message is not displayed in that case (rather, MediaWiki:Difference-missing-revision is). Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:35, 15 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Done --Redrose64 (talk) 22:26, 15 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Protected edit request on 22 September 2015

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Per Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 140#Incorrect appearance of badtitletext, can we change this to the following please?

The requested page title is invalid. It may be empty, contain unsupported characters, or include a non-local or incorrectly linked interwiki prefix. You may be able to locate the desired page by searching for its name (with the interwiki prefix, if any) in the search box.

Possible causes are:

an attempt to load a URL such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/| (the | character is not permitted in page titles);
an attempt to load a deleted page with a "curid=" in the URL - please check the deletion log to see if this is the case.
an attempt to load a URL pointing to a "non-local" interwiki page (usually those not run by the Wikimedia Foundation). For example, the URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/meatball:WikiPedia will give this error, because the "meatball:" interwiki prefix is not marked as local in the interwiki table. Certain interwiki prefixes are marked as local in the table. For example, the URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/meta:Main_page can be used to load meta:Main_page. All interlanguage prefixes are marked as local, and thus URLs such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/fr:Accueil will work as expected. However, non-local interwiki pages can still be accessed by interwiki linking or by entering them in the search box. For example [[meatball:WikiPedia]] can be used on a page, like this: meatball:WikiPedia.

Mdann52 (talk) 15:29, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Mdann52: Wouldn't it be better to fix the bug in MediaWiki rather than adding a workaround here? This sounds like an oversight that will probably be cleared up quite quickly if it is brought to the attention of the devs. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 23:25, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Disabled for now. Perhaps continue the discussion at VPT? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:14, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Protected edit request on 21 November 2015

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Please remove the displayed text after the space from and add https: to the beginning of the external links to other Wikipedia pages. Wikipedia switched to https as of June 12, 2015. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 04:31, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Done — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 15:07, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Red link

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T262959

Why is Special:Badtitle a red link? Red links are pages that don't exist, but apparently Special:Badtitle does exist. If it doesn't exist, clicking on it should say "No such special page." But it doesn't, so what's going on? Gioguch (talk) 15:41, 15 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Gioguch: I think it is a bug, see phab:T262959. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:59, 15 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Protected edit request on 20 June 2023

This edit request to Wikipedia:Bad title has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Please tag the redirect Wikipedia:Bad title with the following as it seems pertinent by replacing the page with the following:

#REDIRECT [[MediaWiki:Badtitletext]] {{Redirect category shell| {{R with history}} }}

Thanks! Steel1943 (talk) 21:03, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Done Izno (talk) 22:21, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Protected edit request on 18 October 2024

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Please add the following text:

* You may be able to resolve this error by following [[Special:GoToInterwiki/{{FULLPAGENAME}}|this link]].

This is because Special:GoToInterwiki will follow non-local interwiki links like wikia:, etc. Awesome Aasim 18:26, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Surely the code (if this is done) should first check if it is a valid interwiki, rather than blindly directing users to guess with an mystery meat link. Or maybe this should be fixed in upstream MediaWiki instead. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:27, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Filed phab:T377640. Unlike some other admins I know that WMF's software contribution process is broken so that doesn't been this should be rejected. But it should be done smartly at least. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:30, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can you point to some examples of where this is occurring, and why trying to provide workaround is better than trying to point someone towards fixing the problem? — xaosflux ^Talk 01:38, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The request, as I understand it, is that if you go to https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=google:Foo, the error message displayed has no pointer to the place where google:foo goes (a Google Search). There's no problem one can point someone toward fixing here.

If I were still an admin, I would probably use my own admin rights to deploy the proposed smarter version.

A hook to Module:Bad title suggestion also needs to be added here for the sake of Google Behind the Screen, too. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:51, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done I've done something like the requested. Izno (talk) 23:02, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Izno Actually please roll back for now. When a bad title is supplied it for some reason serves Special:BadTitle, so this does not work for now. Awesome Aasim 18:49, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]