[Epic] Reduce Change Propagation Noise from Wikidata to Client Wikis
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Authored By

	seanleong-WMDE
	Aug 6 2025, 8:09 AM

Description

User story
As an engineer, I want to reduce irrelevant or low-priority changes being propagated from Wikidata to Wikipedia so that we can reduce database load and reduce noise in the user watchlist

Objective

Reduce the number of Wikidata injections into the recent changes table to help reduce the load on the database. This will contribute WMF's task WE1.4 - "RecentChanges database performance improvements".

Background

Acceptance Criteria

Success Metrics

reduce database load by 30%

**Next Steps**

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Status	Subtype	Assigned	Task
Resolved		None	T400696 FY25-26 WE1.4.1 RecentChanges database performance improvements
Open		None	T400698 Reduce noisy wikidata injected rows to recentchanges
Open		None	T401284 [Epic] Reduce Change Propagation Noise from Wikidata to Client Wikis
Resolved		None	T401286 Turn off Wikidata injection for qualifiers and references
In Progress		seanleong-WMDE	T401288 Implement a more granular alias usage tracking
Resolved		seanleong-WMDE	T403810 Hot fix for missing case for alias entity usage
Resolved		None	T401289 Add bot flag to change propagation parameter
In Progress		None	T401290 Implement new usage types for qualifiers and references
Resolved	BUG REPORT	None	T407684 Lua's ipairs() function can no longer iterate over Wikidata references
Stalled		None	T401291 [Blocked] Bump collapsing usage limits
Open		None	T401315 Observe and metrics tracking
Open		None	T403038 Avoid row injection if the reparse is a no-op
Open		• WMDECyn	T410630 Investigate low hanging fruit for further change propagation reduction
Open		Neslihan_Turan_WMDE	T403008 [ENG] Investigate existing modules for possible performance optimizations
Open		Neslihan_Turan_WMDE	T416825 [ENG & COM] Communicate for fixing noop templates
Open		SuzanneWood-WMDE	T412956 Create commit to stop sending qual/ref only changes to be used only for emergencies
Open		SuzanneWood-WMDE	T415873 [ENG] Convert emergency stop sending qual/ref only changes into feature flag
Open		Neslihan_Turan_WMDE	T416822 [ENG] Create soft and hard entity usages to keep tracking and balance recent change updates
Open		Neslihan_Turan_WMDE	T416823 [ENG & COM] Make new soft and hard entity usage implementations to be used in modules

Event Timeline

seanleong-WMDE created this task.Aug 6 2025, 8:09 AM

Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald TranscriptAug 6 2025, 8:09 AM

seanleong-WMDE updated the task description. (Show Details)Aug 6 2025, 8:18 AM

seanleong-WMDE updated the task description. (Show Details)Aug 6 2025, 8:23 AM

seanleong-WMDE updated the task description. (Show Details)Aug 6 2025, 8:29 AM

Ifeatu_Nnaobi_WMDE subscribed.Aug 6 2025, 9:08 AM

Ifeatu_Nnaobi_WMDE moved this task from Backlog to In Preparation on the Wikidata Integration in Wikimedia projects board.Aug 6 2025, 12:55 PM

seanleong-WMDE changed the status of subtask T401291: [Blocked] Bump collapsing usage limits from Open to Stalled.Aug 6 2025, 1:07 PM

seanleong-WMDE changed the status of subtask T401290: Implement new usage types for qualifiers and references from Open to Stalled.Aug 6 2025, 1:11 PM

seanleong-WMDE changed the status of subtask T401289: Add bot flag to change propagation parameter from Open to Stalled.

Ifeatu_Nnaobi_WMDE updated the task description. (Show Details)Aug 8 2025, 7:15 AM

I am not sure I agree with the objectives 2 and 3 as formulated. If there are very few local edits and a lot of changes from Wikidata that affect the articles on that wiki then we need to be showing them, regardless of what the percentage is.
IMHO what we need to be focusing on more is avoiding showing changes that do not actually affect the wiki, regardless of its ratio to local edits.

Ifeatu_Nnaobi_WMDE updated the task description. (Show Details)Aug 13 2025, 12:41 PM

Ifeatu_Nnaobi_WMDE mentioned this in T400698: Reduce noisy wikidata injected rows to recentchanges.Aug 20 2025, 10:54 AM

ldelench_wmf added a parent task: T400698: Reduce noisy wikidata injected rows to recentchanges.Aug 20 2025, 3:56 PM

ldelench_wmf added a project: OKR-Work.Aug 25 2025, 3:55 PM

• JoelyRooke-WMDE mentioned this in T403386: [ENG] Monitor db load after Epic T401284 interventions.Sep 1 2025, 11:08 AM