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Silent failure on Publish
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Description

Steps to replicate the issue (include links if applicable):

  • Take too long editing a composition (implementation or test case)
  • Confirm all is okay by refreshing tests
  • Click Publish and Publish

What happens?:
Not a lot. The Publish button goes a darker shade of blue.

What should have happened instead?:
It should always be possible to save a composition that is a valid object. Where this proves impossible, the reason for the failure should be provided (indicating whether the error might somehow be resolved).

Software version (on Special:Version page; skip for WMF-hosted wikis like Wikipedia):

Other information (browser name/version, screenshots, etc.):

It’s hard to say what is “too long”, but it is a substantial fraction of an hour, quite possibly an improper one. I have also experienced it editing code, but that’s not too much of an issue because the text can still be copied and then pasted back into a refreshed edit.
The workaround for a composition is to re-create it step by step in a separate browser tab but the failure is most likely to occur on complex compositions, as in T406975#11265010. It may well be connected with tab-switching on a mobile device (iPhone 12 mini) but this is not generally a problem. I generally edit in Safari and switch to Chrome for other open tabs, because app-switching is more convenient than tab-switching within either browser.
Note that the object can continue to be tested after closing the Publish dialogue. I can’t remember now whether I have tried editing but I think I must have. I’ll definitely give it a go if it happens again.

Related Objects

Event Timeline

Jdforrester-WMF subscribed.

"Taking too long" suggests a session failure/user-logged-out issue, which is (a) recoverable and (b) shouldn't happen very often at all. Let's fix this if that's the case. To investigate!

"Taking too long" suggests a session failure/user-logged-out issue, which is (a) recoverable and (b) shouldn't happen very often at all. Let's fix this if that's the case. To investigate!

Thanks. Session failures are not uncommon when tabs are left open in the background. The odd thing about this scenario is that testing of the composition was working correctly before and after the failure to publish. I have since had an explicit “Unable to publish” error on a Python implementation, where the copied code published successfully in a refreshed implementation.

I see MW core already retries once and gets a new csrf token if the token is a 'badtoken', so It already handles recovering by retrying to fetch a new token. I am unsure if we should do anything about this ourselves in this case.

Change #1206881 had a related patch set uploaded (by Daphne Smit; author: Daphne Smit):

[mediawiki/extensions/WikiLambda@master] PublishDialog: Show logged out error message when session token is expired

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1206881

DSmit-WMF changed the task status from Open to In Progress.EditedNov 18 2025, 2:42 PM
DSmit-WMF claimed this task.

I will add a separate message when a badtoken is received (eg; session expired) that the user should login again. Mediawiki code handles retrying.

Change #1206881 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/WikiLambda@master] PublishDialog: Show logged out error message when session token is expired

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1206881

@GrounderUK Do you think its ok with the message for now? If so, close it?

@GrounderUK Do you think its ok with the message for now? If so, close it?

I haven’t been so actively distracted recently, so I’ve yet to see the message on failure. I’ll re-open if I should happen to get a silent failure in the future. Thank you.