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Maniphest T383514

Define how vanishing requests are processed on Wikimedia beta cluster
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Description

It seems that there is no clear expectation spelled out in the documentation on how vanishing requests are processed on Wikimedia Beta Cluster.

I would appreciate clarity because there is a need to test the vanishing request workflow (albeit not constantly). One example is https://github.com/commons-app/apps-android-commons/pull/6117.

I don't exactly know what the expectation should be. Does any of the options below make sense?

  • The requests are to be perpetually pending. This might be the case in the current practice, but I don't see it spelled out. We could declare this more explicitly, for example by saying that "the requests here will never be processed" in the vanishing request user interface.
  • The requests are to be automatically approved. I think this makes sense for the beta cluster, but some additional coding might be required.
  • The requests are to be automatically rejected. This doesn't sound unreasonable either for the beta cluster.

What I tried:
I tried submitting a vanishing request and the request has been pending for a while (24+ hours if I recall it correctly).
https://commons.wikimedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth/Whym_test1

EDIT: I removed the description of a login issue I wrote earlier here. That issue seems unrelated to vanishing, because my other test accounts are affected, too.

Event Timeline

whym created this task.Jan 12 2025, 8:09 AM
Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald TranscriptJan 12 2025, 8:09 AM
whym added a project: Account-Vanishing.Jan 12 2025, 8:12 AM
whym updated the task description. (Show Details)Jan 12 2025, 8:19 AM
Wargo subscribed.Jan 12 2025, 1:11 PM

This is better
"Requests MAY be processed". It should be possible to approve them. Someone with rights might be testing this or approve request from person really wants to vanish. So they may be or not, randomly.

bd808 subscribed.Feb 8 2025, 12:28 AM

I think @Wargo's suggestion is correct. Beta Cluster is a place where things happen when someone who cares is looking but otherwise is not generally an actively maintained collection of content projects.

@whym Where would you expect to find the documentation you are hoping to see added?

whym added a comment.Feb 9 2025, 1:37 AM

Where would you expect to find the documentation you are hoping to see added?

My suggestion would be:

  1. In the UI. Maybe https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Globalvanishrequest-pretext ?
  2. In a wiki page. Maybe https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Cluster ? I think it can be part of the documentation of how SUL works in Beta Cluster (because vanishing is part of CentralAUth), but I couldn't find it exactly.
Bugreporter subscribed.EditedFeb 10 2025, 1:34 AM

We can just maintain a bot to regularly approve vanish requests that are opened for at least 24 hours.

bd808 added a comment.Feb 13 2025, 11:26 PM
In T383514#10534383, @Bugreporter wrote:

We can just maintain a bot to regularly approve vanish requests that are opened for at least 24 hours.

That seems like a nice solution. It does need someone to write and operate the bot. Is that something you are interested in doing @Bugreporter or is this more of a statement of a possible solution?

bd808 added a comment.Mar 26 2026, 9:46 PM
In T383514#10533920, @whym wrote:

Where would you expect to find the documentation you are hoping to see added?

My suggestion would be:

  1. In the UI. Maybe https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Globalvanishrequest-pretext ?

Wikitech is not in the Beta cluster, but I get it. The hard part of this is that we would need to do a message override on each and every wiki that is deployed in Beta... unless you can only submit a vanish request from one? (Nope, I can get the form on any wiki.)

  1. In a wiki page. Maybe https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Cluster ? I think it can be part of the documentation of how SUL works in Beta Cluster (because vanishing is part of CentralAUth), but I couldn't find it exactly.

I don't know that we have any page that attempts to describe SUL in the Beta Cluster. We could certainly put something on either that mw.o page or in the pages about Beta Cluster details on Wikitech. I'm not sure how anyone would ever find that information.

In T383514#10534383, @Bugreporter wrote:

We can just maintain a bot to regularly approve vanish requests that are opened for at least 24 hours.

I think this might be the most correct thing to do. But we need someone to step up and figure out how to do it.

bd808 moved this task from To Triage to Backlog on the Beta-Cluster-Infrastructure board.Mar 26 2026, 9:47 PM
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