Extension:TheWikipediaLibrary was deployed to Beta wiki. This uncovered a bug where at least one user was being spammed by the extension, receiving notifications on an extremely frequent basis. Users should only receive the notification once.
Per the notes in T269849#6728833, this is likely to be a result of the GlobalPreferences guard clause defaulting to assuming a user hasn't received the notification, instead of assuming they have. For users whose GlobalPreferences information isn't retrievable for whatever reason, they will receive the notification after at least every edit.
After investigating other extensions (T269849#6739769), we found that the solution is likely to be borrowing some code from another extension which will correctly check for GlobalPreferences data and fail in a more sensible way.
Acceptance criteria
- The extension correctly handles being unable to find GlobalPreferences data, not defaulting to sending a notification if so
- The extension is deployed to Beta Wiki again, and isn't causing a notification spam for users who originally reported this issue
Original task description
Starting in June, as far as I'm aware of, I keep getting multiple emails from wiki@wikimedia.beta.wmflabs.org in my spam folder (Yahoo Mail). It is always the same one, telling me about access to Wikimedia Library via the link https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/?markasread=****&markasreadwiki=dewiki (the markasread number changes). Looking at my spam folder now, apparently I got one on the 9th, six on the 15th, one on the 18th, five on the 22nd, five on the 23rd and another five today. It's basically every time I edit on ß-dewiki, up to five times a day. I did open the link a few times, but that didn't stop more emails from being sent. What is going on here?