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Main namespace should not be listed in $wgExtraSignatureNamespaces on most wikis (e.g. Commons)
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Description

Main namespace should not be listed in $wgExtraSignatureNamespaces on Commons.

This configuration causes a signature button to be present on the toolbar: e.g. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Angraecum_filicornu&action=edit

image.png (2×3 px, 538 KB)

…and, on pages where signatures are already present, causes [reply] links to appear next to them: e.g. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Coxeter-Dynkin_diagrams
image.png (2×3 px, 617 KB)

It's accidentally configured this way, because Commons is considered a 'special' wiki, and they are configured this way.

'wgExtraSignatureNamespaces' => [
...
	'+special' => [ NS_MAIN ],

But this kind of configuration is intended for wikis like Meta and WIkimania wiki, which are all about discussion and coordination between people.

There are currently only about 30 pages in the main namespace that contain a signature, most of them from 10 years ago: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&limit=500&offset=0&ns0=1&search=-date_of_promotion+insource%3A"%28UTC%29"+insource%3A%2F%5C%28UTC%5C%29%2F

Event Timeline

matmarex renamed this task from Main namespace should not be listed in $wgExtraSignatureNamespaces on Commons to Main namespace should not be listed in $wgExtraSignatureNamespaces on most wikis (Commons, MediaWiki.org).Sep 30 2021, 2:19 PM

Change 725015 had a related patch set uploaded (by Bartosz Dziewoński; author: Bartosz Dziewoński):

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Change wgExtraSignatureNamespaces to not include NS_MAIN on most wikis

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/725015

(Copying my explanation from the Gerrit commit message, for the benefit of Phabricator readers)

In 2014, commit 6c6cbb0b9 added NS_MAIN to wgExtraSignatureNamespaces on all wikis in the 'special' dblist, stating that they "often have discussions, including their "village pump" equivalent, in ns 0".

That wasn't entirely true: the 'special' dblist includes a lot of wikis that don't behave that way, including major projects like Wikimedia Commons and MediaWiki.org. However, it wasn't a problem, because that config option was only used to add an extra button on the editing toolbars. Until…

Recently, we used it in the DiscussionTools extension as a proxy for guessing whether a namespace should use discussion-related features, and it turned out that actually, the main namespace on many of these wikis should not.

After this change, only the following 'special' wikis keep the config:

  • incubatorwiki
  • labswiki
  • labtestwiki
  • mediawikiwiki (edit: see T291630#7425413)
  • metawiki
  • outreachwiki
  • wikimaniawiki
  • all old Wikimania wikis
  • all private wikis – also, some private wikis gain the config

It is removed from the following 'special' wikis:

  • (real projects)
    • commonswiki
    • mediawikiwiki (edit: see T291630#7425413)
    • sourceswiki
    • specieswiki
    • testcommonswiki
    • testwikidatawiki
    • wikidatawiki
  • (weird wikis)
    • apiportalwiki
    • donatewiki
    • foundationwiki
    • loginwiki
    • thankyouwiki
    • votewiki
  • (closed wikis)
    • advisorywiki
    • nostalgiawiki
    • qualitywiki
    • strategywiki
    • usabilitywiki

@Urbanecm says it's worth announcing ahead of time. (Although I think it's a low-impact change and didn't need announcements or discussion.) I will post some notes about it on the affected wikis, and reschedule the deployment.

So far the only responses have been positive. I'm planning to deploy the change early next week.

Change 725015 merged by jenkins-bot:

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Remove NS_MAIN from wgExtraSignatureNamespaces on most 'special' wikis

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/725015

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2021-10-12T11:32:06Z] <urbanecm@deploy1002> Synchronized wmf-config/InitialiseSettings.php: 860ea0944d6dc1e6b5061eb84eec378eb5ac8441: Remove NS_MAIN from wgExtraSignatureNamespaces on most special wikis (T291630) (duration: 00m 57s)

matmarex edited projects, added Editing QA; removed Patch-For-Review.

The change has been applied now.

I will undo the change for MediaWiki.org, as I learned that @kostajh and the Growth team were using the signature tool in VisualEditor there: https://wikimedia.slack.com/archives/C010F7PJRRV/p1634111217031400

(Applying it to MediaWiki.org was originally inspired by @Krinkle's comment T291833#7386113)


In the long term, we'll need a more reliable way to tell whether a page is a discussion page or not, that doesn't depend on namespaces and $wgExtraSignatureNamespaces. There is some discussion on that in T249293 and T251653, and we'll need to revive that as we work on more changes to discussion pages…

Change 730598 had a related patch set uploaded (by Bartosz Dziewoński; author: Bartosz Dziewoński):

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Add NS_MAIN back to wgExtraSignatureNamespaces for mediawikiwiki

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/730598

Can't the Growth team move their signed updates page to a signed namespace instead of making the rest of us deal with it? :-)

Probably, but adding the configuration back shouldn't cause any problems, and there isn't a good reason here to make anyone change their workflow.

Change 730598 merged by jenkins-bot:

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Add NS_MAIN back to wgExtraSignatureNamespaces for mediawikiwiki

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/730598

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2021-10-13T18:14:59Z] <urbanecm@deploy1002> Synchronized wmf-config/InitialiseSettings.php: 224e2a374b1cc6327e9d8c2bca576091ce4efc74: Add NS_MAIN back to wgExtraSignatureNamespaces for mediawikiwiki (T291630) (duration: 01m 05s)

matmarex renamed this task from Main namespace should not be listed in $wgExtraSignatureNamespaces on most wikis (Commons, MediaWiki.org) to Main namespace should not be listed in $wgExtraSignatureNamespaces on most wikis (e.g. Commons).Oct 13 2021, 7:03 PM
ppelberg claimed this task.