Protection of the French Wikipedia main page edit

Hi Amir,

I contact you about the cascade protection of the French Wikipedia main page that you did on February 7 after a template vandalism.

The content of the main page is mostly maintained by non-sysop users so I would like to make some changes to make editing possible again for trusted (but non-sysop) users. As you requested on fr:Discussion Wikipédia:Accueil principal#Notice of emergency action, I'm giving you an overview of my plan (tell me if you prefer discussing this on the page of your work account or in another place, but I don't think that the discussion needs to be private so I would prefer keeping it on-wiki than exchanging emails).

In short, my goal is allow autopatrolled users to edit frames that need regular updates while removing the risk of template vandalism, with the help of a bot doing template expansion.

I intend to do the following changes on page protections :

  • Include the main page in another cascade-protected page (serving only a technical purpose).
  • Remove the cascade protection of the main page.
  • Update the main page so that frames that need to be editable (e.g. the "News" frame) are in a <noinclude> tag. Those frames will be in "extended semi-protection" (the protection level on the French Wikipedia that only allows editing by autopatrolled users). Due to the <noinclude> tag, those frames will not be affected by the cascade protection.

The important part to prevent template vandalism is that those editable frames will be managed by a bot. Users will edit a human-friendly version of the frame not shown on the main page and a bot will copy the content to the frame displayed on the main page after doing a full template expansion (+ checks that the expanded templates have not changed recently). Thus the frames displayed on the main page will not contain any other template.

Please tell me if you have questions or concerns about that approach.

For now, we are temporarily using a variant of what I described above where we did not change any protection setting. The problem is that is requires a running a bot with a sysop account (mine at the moment), and I would prefer switching to the solution above that does not require this.

Another solution that we are considering (probably more in the long term) would be to use cascade protection with the protection level "extended semi-protection". This looks simpler, but using cascade protection with another protection level than "sysop" is intentionnally disabled at the moment (phab:T10796). Do you know how I could reopen the discussion on this? Should I create a bug on Phabricator or are there specific people? I would like to know if MediaWiki developpers are open to making a change so the frwiki community knows whether it is a realistic option or not.

Orlodrim (talk) 22:53, 20 February 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Orlodrim Hi, Thanks for the detailed comment. This looks good in general and is similar to what I've seen in other wikis (e.g. my home wiki has a Draft subpage for news that admin move via a click of a button).
Regarding the ticket, the reasoning behind this was that cascading auto-confirmed (or extended-confirmed) protection would lead to the ability that anyone with auto-confirm right semi-protect a page by transcluding it in a cascade protected page (and basically giving admin rights to people who are not admins). I originally thought that we could full protect a page with cascading semi-protection (imagine main page being full protected but anything under it would be semi-protected automatically). This is not currently possible but could be in theory implemented. The problem is that it doesn't solve the original issue either, still someone can transclude a page in the one of the transcluded pages and practically protect it again. I don't have a good idea at the moment but I will think about it.
If you or any member of French Wikipedia community have any ideas on how to implement a more sustainable solution that could be implemented inside mediawiki so it would reduce your work (e.g. any tweak on phab:T10796), I'd make sure to convey it to higher ups for resourcing (but I can't dedicate engineering resources as I don't have that power). Amir (talk) 14:42, 21 February 2023 (UTC)Reply
About the cascading partial protection, my hope would be that it could be enabled as an option provided that there is an agreement at the community level, despite the known issue. I would personally consider this issue as minor: abusing cascade protection to semi-protect a page sounds even less disruptive than a plain vandalism. It does not require an urgent action and can be treated as other kinds of disruptive behaviors. In a way, the common case of a page with cascade full protection whose content automatically rotates from day to day seems more dangerous (it allows non-sysops to fully protect pages).
Otherwise, I can't think of any simple technical workaround, but a different approach could be to have a protection mode where a page is not automatically regenerated when templates change, like Structured Discussions messages. In fact, this is more or less what I am going to simulate with a bot.
Orlodrim (talk) 21:19, 24 February 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Orlodrim Yeah makes sense, another way to look at it is to have per-namespace cascading protection. For example, for pages that are transcluded in main page and are in template namespace, full protection and for pages in wikipedia ns, extended protection. It shouldn't be too hard. It has some issues as the general one (that someone could theoretically protect a wikipedia-ns page by transcluding it in another page) but much better than the general one. I will talk to people and see what we can do. Thanks. Amir (talk) 18:49, 27 February 2023 (UTC)Reply

Server switch message looks for transaltions edit

Hello

In the past, you helped with the translation of Tech/Server switch. This message will soon be displayed to the public. We look for translators to update this message and check if everything is okay.

I hope you can help.

Thank you very much in advance, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:44, 24 February 2023 (UTC)Reply

  Done --Pa2chant.bis (talk) 05:48, 12 March 2023 (UTC)Reply

Queering Wikipedia 2023 conference edit

 
 

Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group and the organizing team of Queering Wikipedia is delivering the Queering Wikipedia 2023 Conference for LGBT+ Wikimedians and allies, as a hybrid, bilingual and trans-local event. It is online on 12, 14 and 17 May, the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia #IDAHOBIT, with offline events at around 10 locations on 5 continents in the 5-day span as QW2023 Nodes.

The online program is delivered as a series of keynotes, panels, presentations, workshops, lightning talks and creative interventions, starting on Friday noon (UTC) with the first keynote of Dr Nishant Shah entitled: I spy, with my little AI — Wikiway as a means to disrupt the ‘dirty queer’ impulses of emergent AI platforms. Second keynote is at Sunday’s closure by Esra’a Al Shafei, Wikimedia Foundation’s Board of Trustees vice chair, entitled: Digital Public Spaces for Queer Communities.

If you have been an active Wikimedian or enthusiast, supporting LGBT+ activities or if you identify as part of the larger LGBT+ community and allies in Wikimedia, please join us in advancing this thematic work. We encourage you to join online or in person with fellow Wikimedians if it is easy and safe to do so. Our working languages are English and Spanish, with possible local language support at sites of Nodes.

Registration for the online event is free and is open until Wednesday May 10th at 18:00 UTC, for safety protocol. Late event registration approval and event access denial is at the discretion of organizers.

More information, and registration details, may be found on Meta at QW2023

Thanks, from Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:56, 9 May 2023 (UTC)Reply

Wiki is broken edit

Hello ... Swedish wiktionary is broken: I can't delete pages anymore (YES I am sysop). There are other minor problems. You are the last one who successfully performed some deletions there. Is it related to phab:T337700? Taylor 49 (talk) 20:45, 3 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

@Taylor 49 Yeah, it's very likely is. Let me see what I can fix there. Amir (talk) 20:59, 3 June 2023 (UTC)Reply

Your feedback is requested edit

Hello Ladsgroup, We are conducting a poll of global renamers and stewards regarding some future toolings related to some rename requests. Your feedback is requested at the poll on VRT WIKI. Best regards, — xaosflux Talk 00:18, 17 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Xaosflux Hi, I don't think I have access to that wiki. I am a global renamer but not VRT agent. Amir (talk) 13:27, 17 January 2024 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for the note, will check in to this - it is about the topic I've had on the global renamers mailing list. — xaosflux Talk 14:45, 17 January 2024 (UTC)Reply