Background information

• In T109225 (August 2015), I requested the addition of the local welcome template on Arabic Wikinews (arwikinews) to welcome.py
• The chang was committed to the compat branch in gerrit:231894 and to the core branch (without the "u" for Unicode) in gerrit: 231892
• (No bug up until this point)
• In T210480 (November 2018), I requested to add the local version of the welcome template to several projects (but not arwikinews).
• The requested change was committed in gerrit: 475966
• Around that time, I stopped using the compat branch and started running my bot using the core branch.

Steps to Reproduce:

Run the following command on arwikinews

python pwb.py welcome.py -edit:0 -nlog -sul -limit:5000 -lang:ar -family:wikinews

Actual Results:

• The bot adds the welcome template as expected but can't add the signature correctly.
• Eample of wrong edits: Edit 1, Edit 2, Edit 3 (These are the earliest wrong edits, all dated on 27 November 2018)

Expected Results:

• The bot should be able to add the signature correctly.
• Examples of correct edits Edit 1, Edit 2, Edit 3 (These are the last correct edits from before 27 November 2018)

Notes

• This bug affects only arwikinews but not other projects (although I use the same exact configuration for the 6 Arabic sister projects, namely arwiktionary, arwikibooks, etc)
• This bug started only from November 2018. Bot edits before that date on arwikinews are OK.
• 27 November 2018 is the date of gerrit: 475966 (So, may be it is related?)