I met with @Urbanecm_WMF, @Trizek-WMF, and @Etonkovidova to discuss open Product and QA testing questions and a release plan. Decisions from the meeting:

• @Trizek-WMF and I will suggest copy improvements to help make the text slightly less technical and more user-friendly.
• We wanted to check in with the original creator of the task... @Iniquity: we've attempted to QA test this work and we don't see any blockers to release, but we also notice than many wikis use Babel in unique ways. We just wanted to check in to see if there are any specific use cases you can think of that we should be sure to test for, or if there is anything further you can think of that should block this release?
• @Ladsgroup given that this was hackathon work, and not a major Growth team project, we plan to simply release this to all wikis without a pilot release or experiment. However if you are eager to make changes to fa.wiki, we could consider releasing to fa.wiki ASAP (before implementing copy improvements). Let us know if you want us to consider this.

In T328171#10134020, @Trizek-WMF wrote:

Documentation should be updated:

• Extension
• Community Configuration (using the interface messages)

@Trizek-WMF Is this something you are working on, or should I create a task around updating documentation?

What did I miss? Is anything else missing / blocking a release?

No rush on my side, I just wanted to make sure I do my part. That's all.

In T374348#10189170, @KStoller-WMF wrote:

• We wanted to check in with the original creator of the task... @Iniquity: we've attempted to QA test this work and we don't see any blockers to release, but we also notice than many wikis use Babel in unique ways. We just wanted to check in to see if there are any specific use cases you can think of that we should be sure to test for, or if there is anything further you can think of that should block this release?

Hi, I don't see any blockers, but could you please correct the description for labels? :) T328171#10135832

Thanks! OK, we are reviewing previous feedback (including T328171#10135832) and looking to make the copy on the configuration form a little more user-friendly and less technical, and then we should be ready for release.

Bump. Is releasing this still planned for January 2025?

In T374348#10454410, @Pppery wrote:

Bump. Is releasing this still planned for January 2025?

Yes, but are frequently vacations in the first half of January 2025. We should now have everyone relevant, I expect this to be looked at within the next two weeks (between Jan 21 and Jan 30).

Change #1114002 had a related patch set uploaded (by Urbanecm; author: Urbanecm):

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] [testwiki] Babel: Enable CommunityConfiguration integration

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1114002

Change #1115403 had a related patch set uploaded (by Urbanecm; author: Urbanecm):

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Babel: Enable CommunityConfiguration on all wikis

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1115403

Change #1114002 merged by jenkins-bot:

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] [testwiki] Babel: Enable CommunityConfiguration integration

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1114002

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-01-30T23:07:39Z] <urbanecm@deploy2002> Started scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1114002|[testwiki] Babel: Enable CommunityConfiguration integration (T374348)]]

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-01-30T23:10:23Z] <urbanecm@deploy2002> urbanecm: Backport for [[gerrit:1114002|[testwiki] Babel: Enable CommunityConfiguration integration (T374348)]] synced to the testservers (https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mwdebug)

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-01-30T23:23:11Z] <urbanecm@deploy2002> Finished scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1114002|[testwiki] Babel: Enable CommunityConfiguration integration (T374348)]] (duration: 15m 32s)

Change #1115403 merged by jenkins-bot:

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Babel: Enable CommunityConfiguration on all wikis

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1115403

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-01-30T23:27:57Z] <urbanecm@deploy2002> Started scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1115403|Babel: Enable CommunityConfiguration on all wikis (T374348)]]

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-01-30T23:30:37Z] <urbanecm@deploy2002> urbanecm: Backport for [[gerrit:1115403|Babel: Enable CommunityConfiguration on all wikis (T374348)]] synced to the testservers (https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mwdebug)

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-01-30T23:41:05Z] <urbanecm@deploy2002> Finished scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1115403|Babel: Enable CommunityConfiguration on all wikis (T374348)]] (duration: 13m 04s)

In T374348#10189204, @Ladsgroup wrote:

No rush on my side, I just wanted to make sure I do my part. That's all.

Whatever your part was, this is now done.

Definitely worth User-notice. Since yesterday, administrators can customize how Babel operates via eg. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CommunityConfiguration/Babel. Several communities blocked Babel's bot account (as opposed to disabling the autocreation), this would now be easy to migrate too (not sure if we want to mention that in user notice).

Courtesy ping to @Trizek-WMF as well.

Very good thing. IMHO the blocks against the bot should be globally removed in favor of setting the new setting "no autocreation" on affected wikis.

At least in Russian Wikipedia, a number of erroneous categories were created by Babel AutoCreate after this change: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Служебная:Вклад/Babel_AutoCreate (you might need to look at deleted contribs in case they get deleted)

I assume this issue is larger than one wiki.

It brews for example "Категория:Ru-2" instead of "Категория:User ru-2"

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Maintenance_script

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D0%BB%D1%83%D0%B6%D0%B5%D0%B1%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%8F:CommunityConfiguration/Babel

This doesn't look good.

NOT broken on Swedish wiktionary: https://sv.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:Bidrag/Babel_AutoCreate

Checked enwiki Special:Contributions for Babel AutoCreate - the category names followed specified format on Special:CommunityConfiguration/Babel. Some other config settings affecting incorrect format for category names on ruwiki ( @Urbanecm_WMF)?

FWIW the results of the new special page https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:GlobalContributions/Babel_AutoCreate seem to show the same problem at plwiki and frwiktionary

Thank you for the report! My apologies, this was caused by a mistake in the deployment procedure that no one managed to catch. The problem I deployed the "use community configuration from now on" patch while migrating the config (because the script to migrate config needs to use community configuration). This resulted in some wikis running with default config (eg. Category:En), rather than using the actual configured data. The earlier a wiki is in the alphabet, the lower chance to experience issue it had, as the migration went through wikis alphabetically. Fortunately, this means the issue should be no longer happening, as everything had a chance to settle down.

Apologies for the mess caused. I'll be fixing this up, and we'll also reflect this in internal processes to limit the chances of this occuring again with a future change.

Should be now all fixed. I created T385359: Remove pages accidentally created by Babel AutoCreate to track the fixing as well, please feel free to report any other categories that should not have been created there.

@Quiddity Not sure why it was moved to Not ready to announce; I believe this should be ready for inclusion.

In T374348#10514103, @Etonkovidova wrote:

Checked enwiki Special:Contributions for Babel AutoCreate - the category names followed specified format on Special:CommunityConfiguration/Babel. Some other config settings affecting incorrect format for category names on ruwiki ( @Urbanecm_WMF)?

I believe those issues should now be resolved, and everything should be working as intended now. Moving back to QA.

In T374348#10189211, @Iniquity wrote:

In T374348#10189170, @KStoller-WMF wrote:

• We wanted to check in with the original creator of the task... @Iniquity: we've attempted to QA test this work and we don't see any blockers to release, but we also notice than many wikis use Babel in unique ways. We just wanted to check in to see if there are any specific use cases you can think of that we should be sure to test for, or if there is anything further you can think of that should block this release?

Hi, I don't see any blockers, but could you please correct the description for labels? :) T328171#10135832

Hi! Can we change the descriptions? :)

In T374348#10514881, @Iniquity wrote:

Hi! Can we change the descriptions? :)

Hi! Thanks for the ping & reminder! I've filled T385390, so it can be looked at separately.

In T374348#10514538, @Urbanecm_WMF wrote:

@Quiddity Not sure why it was moved to Not ready to announce; I believe this should be ready for inclusion.

Boldly moving per this comment to ensure this doesn't accidentally get forgotten about :)

Thanks! Added to next week's Tech News.