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Undeploy StopForumSpam extension from Wikimedia production
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Description

See: T273220#11783110

To be clear: this is not about archiving the extension, at least not at this time. As has been noted previously, even with a lack of maintenance, the extension should still work as a basic, drop-in, anti-spam solution for various MediaWiki operators. I also personally believe that StopForumSpam data could be incorporated as an additional data set for the iPoid-Service (IPoid OpenSearch) service, if the WMF ever decides to explore that option in depth.

Undeployment checklist (per T294329#8085948):

  • Remove any relevant beta cluster configuration (InitialiseSettings-labs.php, CommonSettings-labs.php)
  • Remove any relevant production cluster configuration (InitialiseSettings.php, CommonSettings.php)
  • Remove any database configuration (not applicable for this extension)
  • Disable or clear any file system customizations or cache data, if necessary, within Wikimedia production (not applicable)
  • Remove the extension from extension-list to stop rebuilding l10n on deployment
  • Stop branching the extension by removing it from make-release.yaml

Project / code information

Repositoryhttps://gerrit.wikimedia.org/g/mediawiki/extensions/StopForumSpam
Project pagehttps://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:StopForumSpam
Current maintainersSecurity-Team, @sbassett, @Reedy, @Legoktm
Recent commit activityAlmost exclusively automated maintenance: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/q/project:mediawiki/extensions/StopForumSpam
Open patches3 very dated patches: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/q/project:mediawiki/extensions/StopForumSpam+status:open
Number and age of open bugs11 in the current backlog: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/view/781/
Dependenciesstopforumspam.org data, MediaWiki >= 1.46, ext-zlib, various composer and npm dev dependencies

Details

Event Timeline

Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald Transcript

Change #1267157 had a related patch set uploaded (by Reedy; author: Reedy):

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Undeploy Extension:StopForumSpam

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1267157

A couple of questions that've occurred to me:

Correct, it would transition back to being more of a Community-maintained extension.

Probably, though I'd assume that if the right is no longer defined, these would basically be no-ops? @Reedy or @Catrope could likely confirm.

Can be done after.

GWToolset was removed years ago, and I had the stewards remove it recently

16:34, 26 March 2026 EPIC talk contribs changed global group permissions for Special:GlobalUsers/steward: added (none); removed gwtoolset (extension undeployed)
sbassett changed the task status from Open to In Progress.Tue, Apr 7, 4:47 PM
sbassett assigned this task to Reedy.
sbassett triaged this task as Low priority.
sbassett moved this task from Incoming to In Progress on the Security-Team board.
sbassett added a project: SecTeam-Processed.

Change #1267157 merged by jenkins-bot:

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Undeploy Extension:StopForumSpam

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1267157

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-04-07T20:09:27Z] <reedy@deploy1003> Started scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1267157|Undeploy Extension:StopForumSpam (T422185)]]

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-04-07T20:28:15Z] <reedy@deploy1003> reedy: Backport for [[gerrit:1267157|Undeploy Extension:StopForumSpam (T422185)]] synced to the testservers (see https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mwdebug). Changes can now be verified there.

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-04-07T20:40:44Z] <reedy@deploy1003> Finished scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1267157|Undeploy Extension:StopForumSpam (T422185)]] (duration: 31m 17s)

Reedy updated the task description. (Show Details)

I've removed these.