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Check/fix/cleanup licenses on Wikinewses january 2025
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Description

Wikinewses uses a special license and have different MediaWiki messages than other wikis. That causes some confusion.

There were some discussions at https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews_talk:2024_Copyright_license_upgrade#To_do_per_November_2024 and I thought that now it was fixed. And the change of licenses on enwikinews +2 was done per T381421: Change default license on en.wikinews, pl.wikinews and he.wikinews to cc-by-4.0 on December 16, 2024.

But I know of two issues. First one is mentioned in T381946: Update license of frwikinews to CC-BY-SA 4.0 by January 1, 2025 where frwikinews request to change to CC-BY-SA-4.0 which is the default license of all wikis.

There are three level of licenses set in 'wgRightsUrl' and 'wgRightsText' (default for all wikis, exception for all Wikinewses, exception-exception for one Wikinews):

'default' => 'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.$lang',
'wikinews' => 'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/',
'enwikinews' => 'https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/',

For frwikinews the problem is that they want to use the default license CC-BY-SA-4.0 so there was a question if they needed the specific line or not.

Because if a delay of the change of configuration the $1 ad $2 was replaced locally on frwikinews by plain text in some MediaWiki messages and that now causes problems.

The other issue is mentioned at https://pt.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinot%C3%ADcias:Reda%C3%A7%C3%A3o/Atualizar_licen%C3%A7a_para_CC_BY_4.0_(04/12/2024)#Informa%C3%A7%C3%B5es_sobre_a_sugest%C3%A3o_no_Meta_sobre_a_mudan%C3%A7a_da_licen%C3%A7a_padr%C3%A3o_para_Wikinews and it is that “It looks like the mobile editor uses a different message for all Wikinews wikis: MediaWiki:Wikinews-mobile-license-links rather than MediaWiki:Mobile-frontend-license-links.” (reported by Utilizador:Edu!)

So as suggested by @matmarex in the discussion above I have created this in the hope that we clarify which messages is used and get them updated and delete those that are not needed.

As info I can tell that there is a RfC on Meta https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Update_standard_license_for_Wikinews and I hope we can change the standard license on all Wikinewses on February 1, 2025 to CC-BY-4.0 (so still without the SA part). It may give some questions from the different Wikinewses so hopefully we can eliminate some of the problems before that date or at least make sure we know which pages need to be fixed locally.

(If this task is not what was meant feel free to close it or fix it.)

Event Timeline

Change #1109496 had a related patch set uploaded (by Bartosz Dziewoński; author: Bartosz Dziewoński):

[mediawiki/extensions/WikimediaMessages@master] Add license messages for new Wikinews licenses

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1109496

This patch should fix the messages shown in the mobile editor. Wikinewses that switch to CC BY 4.0 or BY-SA 4.0 will now have (yet more) separate messages defining the licenses for the mobile editor.

Regarding frwikinews, I commented on https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/operations/mediawiki-config/+/1106911 – I think the patch I proposed above will make that patch also work correctly.

Change #1109496 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/WikimediaMessages@master] Add license messages for new Wikinews licenses

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1109496

Thank you, I'm happy to see this getting fixed (even if there are more messages).

I tested how it looked in mobile view and I see these messages (in English):

enwikinews: "Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 unless otherwise noted."
enwikipedia: "Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted."

So it is not clear to me why more messages are needed. So why can't wikinews use the same message as all other wikis and let the $1 (or $2) set in 'wgRightsUrl' and 'wgRightsText' define the license?

I'm not against the change. I just don't understand why its not possible to use the same text for this message.

They could use the same message, but the last time I tried to change MobileFrontend so that manually updating these messages wouldn't be needed, my changes were rejected (T296791), and I don't feel like starting that discussion again.

Change #1109756 had a related patch set uploaded (by Bartosz Dziewoński; author: Bartosz Dziewoński):

[mediawiki/extensions/WikimediaMessages@wmf/1.44.0-wmf.11] Add license messages for new Wikinews licenses

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1109756

Thanks a million! (I may start a discussion again once the change of licenses on Wikinewses are complete. Unless ofcourse someone have a good argument why Wikinewses (still) need a different message than other wikis.)

Change #1109756 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/WikimediaMessages@wmf/1.44.0-wmf.11] Add license messages for new Wikinews licenses

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1109756

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-01-15T08:48:00Z] <urbanecm@deploy2002> Started scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1109756|Add license messages for new Wikinews licenses (T383338)]], [[gerrit:1106911|Update French wikinews license to CC-BY-SA 4.0 (T381946)]]

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-01-15T08:53:25Z] <urbanecm@deploy2002> sync-world aborted: Backport for [[gerrit:1109756|Add license messages for new Wikinews licenses (T383338)]], [[gerrit:1106911|Update French wikinews license to CC-BY-SA 4.0 (T381946)]] (duration: 05m 25s)

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-01-15T08:54:22Z] <urbanecm@deploy2002> Started scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1109756|Add license messages for new Wikinews licenses (T383338)]], [[gerrit:1106911|Update French wikinews license to CC-BY-SA 4.0 (T381946)]], [[gerrit:1111568|htmlform: fix defaults for namespace and relative in titlesmultiselect (T383133)]], [[gerrit:1111569|htmlform: fix defaults for namespace and relative in titlesmultiselect (T383133)]]

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-01-15T09:15:55Z] <urbanecm@deploy2002> matmarex, urbanecm, dreamrimmer: Backport for [[gerrit:1109756|Add license messages for new Wikinews licenses (T383338)]], [[gerrit:1106911|Update French wikinews license to CC-BY-SA 4.0 (T381946)]], [[gerrit:1111568|htmlform: fix defaults for namespace and relative in titlesmultiselect (T383133)]], [[gerrit:1111569|htmlform: fix defaults for namespace and relative in titlesmultiselect (T383133)]]

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-01-15T09:34:20Z] <urbanecm@deploy2002> Finished scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1109756|Add license messages for new Wikinews licenses (T383338)]], [[gerrit:1106911|Update French wikinews license to CC-BY-SA 4.0 (T381946)]], [[gerrit:1111568|htmlform: fix defaults for namespace and relative in titlesmultiselect (T383133)]], [[gerrit:1111569|htmlform: fix defaults for namespace and relative in titlesmultiselect (T383133)]] (durat