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Implement a more granular alias usage tracking
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Description

User story
As an engineer, I want aliases to have a dedicated and granular usage tracking key, especially in different languages (e.g., A.en, A.fr), so that alias changes are tracked per language and reduce irrelevant noise in the DB and watchlist.

Background
Alias changes are ~20% of all change propagation
Currently, they are all in the O usage, which can’t be scoped
Currently rated as an M ticket

How labels previously have been granularized .
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T172914
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T90436

Acceptance Criteria

  • Implement alias usage tracking with A.<lang> keys
  • Ensure that the languages in the tracking in client are correct. Making sure wbc_entity_usage table had the correct language.
  • Ensure other usages still work as usual, except O aspect
  • Ensure that alias updates no longer cause noise in unrelated languages’ watchlists
  • Set up collapsing limit (probably 10) configuration for aliases.
  • Remove aliases from Miscellaneous
  • Set up translation Gerrit Patch
  • Update docs in repo
  • Update this doc after merge https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase/Schema/wbc_entity_usage
  • Set Alias entity usage modifier limit to 10 Gerrit Patch
  • Let community know that noisy alias notifications will disappear (there are related tickets but the exact one needs to be found to report)

Success Metric
~20% less changes are propagated.

Event Timeline

Change #1176670 had a related patch set uploaded (by Seanleong-wmde; author: Seanleong-wmde):

[mediawiki/extensions/Wikibase@master] Granularised alias usage tracking. WIP

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1176670

Change #1177406 had a related patch set uploaded (by Seanleong-wmde; author: Seanleong-wmde):

[mediawiki/extensions/Wikibase@master] Translation for granularised alias usage tracking.

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1177406

Change #1177406 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/Wikibase@master] Translation for granularised alias usage tracking.

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1177406

Change #1180523 had a related patch set uploaded (by Seanleong-wmde; author: Seanleong-wmde):

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Set Alias entity usage modifier limit to 10.

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1180523

As the migration phase might take more than a month, probably even years, plus we have no guarantee that all the "O" aspects that are related to aliases will be fully migrated to "A.xx" within the period. Therefore, we will be writing a script to do the migration to force a refresh.

In addition, doing a purge on a page will not force a refresh on the DB, a parse is needed instead.

Tagging T401290 as it will probably need the same process.

Change #1176670 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/Wikibase@master] Granularised alias usage tracking.

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1176670

Change #1185063 had a related patch set uploaded (by Neslihan Turan; author: Neslihan Turan):

[mediawiki/extensions/Wikibase@master] Hot fix for T401288 and T401286 to work together.

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1185063

seanleong-WMDE changed the task status from Open to In Progress.Oct 6 2025, 6:19 AM

Change #1196034 had a related patch set uploaded (by Seanleong-wmde; author: Seanleong-wmde):

[mediawiki/extensions/Wikibase@master] Allowing Visual Changes only on pilot wikis

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1196034

Change #1196034 abandoned by Neslihan Turan:

[mediawiki/extensions/Wikibase@master] Allowing Visual Changes only on pilot wikis

Reason:

Two change is combined together in another change.

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1196034

Change #1180523 merged by jenkins-bot:

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Set Alias entity usage modifier limit to 10.

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1180523

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-10-22T13:20:32Z] <lucaswerkmeister-wmde@deploy2002> Started scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1180523|Set Alias entity usage modifier limit to 10. (T401288)]]

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-10-22T13:25:17Z] <lucaswerkmeister-wmde@deploy2002> seanleong-wmde, lucaswerkmeister-wmde: Backport for [[gerrit:1180523|Set Alias entity usage modifier limit to 10. (T401288)]] synced to the testservers (see https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mwdebug). Changes can now be verified there.

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-10-22T13:41:19Z] <lucaswerkmeister-wmde@deploy2002> Finished scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1180523|Set Alias entity usage modifier limit to 10. (T401288)]] (duration: 20m 47s)