Project:Village Pump/Flow/2024/11

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Cleaning up empty Flow placeholders

Flow is (sometime soon) going to be archived and undeployed from Wikipedia, which is going to involve a maintenance script moving every Flow page to a subpage and adding wikitext placeholder (phab:T371738). I'm thinking about, before that happens, running a bot to:

1. Delete Flow pages that have an empty header and zero topics (like Talk:Wikimedia Release Engineering Team/SSD Sync Up/2019-03-05)
2. Delete Flow pages that have no content other than a pointer to a /LQT Archive 1 page, and delete the /LQT Archive 1 page as well (like Extension talk:Vandal Brake and Extension talk:Vandal Brake/LQT Archive 1)

There are several hundred total of each type of page. I deleted a bunch manually earlier today.

Does this seem like a good idea. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 23:26, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

and delete the /LQT Archive 1 page as well

...where the LQT archive page is empty as well, right?

Other than that, I agree, there's no reason to keep these empty pages around, especially if the maintenance script isn't going to attempt to delete them itself. 「ディノ奴千？！」^{☎ Dinoguy1000} 02:54, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

In said cases the /LQT Archive 1 should always be empty since if it had content it would have been copied to the Flow page. But yes I should check explicitly. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 03:41, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

I reviewed the LQT archive 1 pages with substantive content. In a few places the Flow page was empty so I deleted the Flow page and moved the LQT archive over the Flow page (and removed the archive template). And there were a lot of other oddities.

Probably a lot of the /LQT Archive 1 pages can be deleted too (even if there is a Flow page with content it was based off of), since the vast majority of them have no content other than someone adding LiquidThreads, and then Flow replacing it.

Most of the ones that don't meet that description either contain only a pointer to old pre-anything archives (which are already in the Flow header). And there's a few cases where the LQT page contains wikitext because people mixed systems I guess ... * Pppery * _{it has begun} 04:21, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

I've continued reviewing a bunch of Flow pages. There are several thousands pages to delete per the above criteria. And I manually deleted a ton of old leftover crap of every imaginable kind

What should be done with pages like User_talk:Thennicke that contain nothing other than a pointer to a wikitext archive, in user talk namespace? These differ from the /LQT cases because the user explicitly enabled Flow. I'm inclined to delete the Flow board, move the wikitext archive back to the base title, and remove the {{Archive }} template. The other option would be to do nothing and let the migration script handle it. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 00:29, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

It also seems to be worthwhile to batch delete user talk pages that contain only the header and no Flow topics where the user in question has made few other edits. There are several thousand of them.

I manually reviewed the first ~100 cases of user talk pages that contain only the header and except for the above situation (repeated several times) every single one was either spam/out-of-scope/test edits that I deleted on-sight or some kind of useless platitude like "talk to me here", which I didn't bother pressing the delete button on but isn't worth letting the migration script move to a subpage on either. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 00:45, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

There are a total of 5031 empty flow boards, 297 boards with nothing other than /LQT placeholders, and 722 user talk pages containing only a header of users with <50 global edits. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 06:34, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Let's get rid of at least the empty stuff. Those 722 can go as well as far as I'm concerned, but we might want a bit more review and consensus on that ? —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 12:14, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

It should be possible to update the maintenance script so that it automatically deletes Flow pages that have an empty header and zero topics. I see you (Pppery) commented about that at phab:T371738#10286448 already, so I'm just confirming that it is being looked into by the team.

For the completely-empty pages, I wonder if we might want to delete them without-log-entry, so that the empty wikitext page doesn't have the "this page was deleted" banner at the top as a cluttering-distraction? I believe that is technically possible. --- If folks here agree that this is a good idea, then we can ask the team to make it so.

For the "almost empty" pages, I agree those would need to be examined manually. Personally, I agree with both of you that those pages can probably just be deleted, once they've been checked for edge-cases.

Thanks again for all your associated efforts and thoughts on this, Pppery! It's deeply appreciated. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:55, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

I think deleting things without producing a log entry is downright scary and contrary to the wiki way of every action being logged.

On other issues, I assumed from the fact that my comment on phab:T371738#10215964 wasn't responded to and a maintenance script was merged and run without doing any of those things that the WMF was disclaiming interest in implementing them and thus the task fell to me to do it myself - I was prepared to run Project:Requests for permissions/Flow cleanup bot (and still am).

Even if the WMF does do that, though, I learned quite a bit from this experience, and the code I wrote there I also used to manually clean up a bunch of pages that really did need manual review. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 20:05, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Bump. The Flow maintenance script run is approaching soon. Does the WMF plan to do things for me, or should I run my mass delete bot.

While I technically could grant rights myself since I'm now a crat, I would prefer if a different crat were to handle that request which has now languished for a month. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 06:47, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

TLDR: If you would like to do so, please go ahead, with our thanks.

Details: I checked again and our script won't delete empty pages at first, we just move them. But we would then delete the completely-empty pages when we convert the pages to wikitext in the future.

My hesitation about picking between the two options, was about whether it's better to (A) leave a usertalkpage with a temporarily useless link at top (which would become a redlink, once the Flow-subpage is deleted), like at fr:s:Discussion utilisateur:Mattflaschen-WMF, or (B) to leave it with a deletion-log entry at the top, like at User talk:Quiddity_II, which might be confusing/worrying/off-putting for the user or folks who go there. But I'm probably overthinking it.

I'll add a note of support at the bot Request, to see if that helps another 'crat to expedite it (or make you more comfortable doing so yourself). Thanks again. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 17:31, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

FuzzyBot spamming recent changes

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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It's getting difficult to see recent changes due to the massive number of category translation pages being churned out by FuzzyBot. In the filters I have human not bot selected and bot edits unselected, so bots should be hidden (and those settings haven't changed in a long time either). FuzzyBot is still indeed a bot too. Is this just me or are filters not working currently? Clump (talk) 18:58, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed the same thing. Apparently you have to explicitly specify an edit is a bot edit when making edits via internal PHP code, and I failed to realize this when I wrote the patch that caused FuzzyBot to do this. You can work around the issue by deselecting "page creations". * Pppery * _{it has begun} 19:01, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Flood has stopped now. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 20:06, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Indeed it has! Thanks. Clump (talk) 20:08, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

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titleblacklist-forbidden-edit

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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the message should be more detailed like enwiki 2603:8001:6940:2100:5732:124D:26A:E5B0 (talk) 14:38, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Why? This wiki does not have a culture of randomly copying stuff from elsewhere for the sake of doing so. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 17:03, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

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Install ReplaceText or an equivalent extension for mediawiki.org

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Running maintenance scripts directly is deprecated since MW 1.40, and instead we're told to use "php maintenance/run.php someScript.php". However, the MW documentation is obsolete in this respect and it still uses the old form virtually everywhere, I'd like to address that but there's no way I'm editing hundreds of pages one by one.

If someone were to install Extension:Replace_Text or equivalent and grant access to it for autoconfirmed users I'd be glad to do it, though. Tactica (talk) 00:34, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Adding new extensions to the wiki farm is a very difficult process and generally not done. w:Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser is probably your best bet here.

This wiki doesn't have any formal approval process for it, so you can even set it to auto-save (if you really think the edits are simple enough to be done purely automatically, which I'm not 100% sure of) * Pppery * _{it has begun} 01:25, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

OK, I may try that then. Anyway even if the bureaucracy red tape wasn't there I guess granting access to ReplaceText for autoconfirmed users here would have never been done I suppose. Oh well.

Thanks. Tactica (talk) 01:38, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Just wanted to add that in addition to red tape stuff, Extension:ReplaceText is incompatible with wikis that use the external storage feature, which this wiki does. Bawolff (talk) 11:31, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

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HELP

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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I want to add a link to my Bilibili account's home(at my Mediawiki account home). But I can't create a link. GreenIngot(LvDing235)(DT001)(Diter01) (talk) 11:23, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Please see Project:About; this is not a place to write about yourself. Clump (talk) 12:10, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

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Link to external support site for extensions

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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For the extensions developed by us (HalloWelt), we would like to add a template to the extension talk pages that refers support questions to our external support site.

We want to consolidate our efforts to support the community and since we already have a place where we offer free support, we need a way to redirect questions there. Otherwise, questions tend to get overlooked.

Does anyone see an issue with adding such a template? MLRodrigue (talk) 13:49, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

This seems like a good idea, sure. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 14:40, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable to me, as long as support is freely given. Bawolff (talk) 20:46, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

@MLRodrigue: As a starter, I've created Template:External help for this – is that sufficient? Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 15:02, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Looks good to me Ciencia Al Poder (talk) 17:02, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

Perfekt, thanks a lot for creating the template. We will start using it. MLRodrigue (talk) 13:43, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Sign up for the language community meeting on November 29th, 16:00 UTC

Hello everyone,

The next language community meeting is coming up next week, on November 29th, at 16:00 UTC (Zonestamp! For your timezone <https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1732896000>). If you're interested in joining, you can sign up on this wiki page: <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Language_and_Product_Localization/Community_meetings#29_November_2024>.

This participant-driven meeting will be organized by the Wikimedia Foundation’s Language Product Localization team and the Language Diversity Hub. There will be presentations on topics like developing language keyboards, the creation of the Moore Wikipedia, and the language support track at Wiki Indaba. We will also have members from the Wayuunaiki community joining us to share their experiences with the Incubator and as a new community within our movement. This meeting will have a Spanish interpretation.

Looking forward to seeing you at the language community meeting! Cheers, Srishti 19:53, 21 November 2024 (UTC) MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:53, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Can't create an article

Hello everyone,

I'm a product manager for Wikibase Cloud for several months now. When I tried to create a page, it showed me this error:

Editing the main namespace is limited for new users. This site is for documenting the MediaWiki software. It is not the wiki that you set up for your class, workplace, or personal use, nor is it Wikipedia. If you want to create a Wikipedia article, please start here. Think this is an error? Ask at Project:Village pump.

At the same time, I can freely edit the page that my colleagues create.

Could you please grant me permissions to create pages?

Thanks! Anton Kokh (WMDE) (talk) 14:27, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

This is because an abusefilter is set that prevents new and unregistered users from creating mainspace articles. ToadetteEdit (talk) 15:35, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

I have added an exemption to the AbuseFilter, I think you should be ok now. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 15:39, 26 November 2024 (UTC)