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MassMessage didn't warn about an extra angle-bracket which caused delivery issues
Open, Needs TriagePublicBUG REPORT

Description

An extra angle-bracket in the wikitext, caused MassMessage to send a partial message to wikitext pages and error out on Flow pages.

<<translate><!--T:1--> ...

It would be nice if this kind of error could be detected, or provide a clearer error message.


Original report:

What happened:

  • I sent a translatable page as a message at 21:06 UTC to 5 pages, and it skipped including the header section as the subject line (which I had set).
  • I assumed I mis-clicked and re-sent the message. It was not received on any target page. I tried again two minutes later, and two hours later, both with the same result: messages are not being sent. (see logs)

What should happen:

  • After I queue the message to be sent, MassMessage delivers it to target pages

Event Timeline

Confirmed, it's not working for me at all, either, using this content page, and this delivery list.
Looking at the logs on each wiki, I see a bunch of errors for where the bot attempted to post to my Structured Discussions page.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Log/MediaWiki_message_delivery e.g.

23:25, 26 September 2024 Delivery of "" to User talk:Quiddity (WMF)/sandbox1 failed with an error code of topic

Note: It appears to be logging 3 errors for each send-attempt. (4 attempts by Rae, and 1 by me)

@Quiddity Was the section header missing in the MassMessage wikitext preview, or only after you sent it?

Issue resolved. An extra < in the wikitext was causing the problem.

<<translate><!--T:1--> ...

Devs say they might be able to add a clearer error message for this type of thing, so I'll leave this task open for now.

Quiddity renamed this task from MassMessage not sending messages to MassMessage didn't warn about an extra angle-bracket which caused delivery issues.Sep 27 2024, 5:43 PM
Quiddity updated the task description. (Show Details)

Change #1076247 had a related patch set uploaded (by Michael Große; author: Michael Große):

[mediawiki/extensions/MassMessage@master] Improve error logentry when subject section is invalid

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1076247

Change #1076247 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/MassMessage@master] Improve error logentry when subject section is invalid

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1076247