Disable the creation of synthetic main refs in production
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Authored By

	WMDE-Fisch
	Thu, May 28, 9:01 AM

Description

Context

We want to get away form synthetic main refs to be compatible with {{reflist}}. Now that we're confident that the code works well without them we can disable the usage in production.

Task

Enable wgCiteRemoveSyntheticRefsUnsafe in production by default ( planed for June 1st )

Details

Related Changes in Gerrit:

	Subject	Repo	Branch	Lines +/-
	Disable the creation of synthetic main refs in production	operations/mediawiki-config	master	+2 -4

Customize query in gerrit

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Status	Assigned	Task
Duplicate	None	T411856 [Epic] Avoid unintended content loss due the usage of synthetic ldr's
In Progress	None	T397501 [Epic] Fix issues with {{reflist}} or missing references lists and main+details sub-references
Open	None	T406866 [Epic] Stop creating new synthetic refs in VisualEditor
Open	None	T427484 Disable the creation of synthetic main refs in production

Event Timeline

WMDE-Fisch created this task.Thu, May 28, 9:01 AM

Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald TranscriptThu, May 28, 9:01 AM

lilients_WMDE renamed this task from Disable the creation of synthtic main refs in production to Disable the creation of synthetic main refs in production.Fri, May 29, 9:09 AM

lilients_WMDE claimed this task.Fri, May 29, 12:26 PM

lilients_WMDE moved this task from Sprint Backlog to Doing on the WMDE-TechWish-Sprint-2026-05-12-Fungi board.

Change #1295454 had a related patch set uploaded (by Svantje Lilienthal; author: Svantje Lilienthal):

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Disable the creation of synthetic main refs in production

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1295454

gerritbot added a project: Patch-For-Review.Fri, May 29, 12:28 PM

lilients_WMDE removed lilients_WMDE as the assignee of this task.Fri, May 29, 12:29 PM

lilients_WMDE moved this task from Doing to Tech Review on the WMDE-TechWish-Sprint-2026-05-12-Fungi board.

lilients_WMDE subscribed.

Seems reasonable to go straight to default, since it should only affect the 12 wikis where sub-referencing is currently deployed.

Change #1295454 merged by jenkins-bot:

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Disable the creation of synthetic main refs in production

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1295454

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-06-01T07:47:31Z] <wmde-fisch@deploy1003> Started scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1295454|Disable the creation of synthetic main refs in production (T427484)]]

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-06-01T07:51:22Z] <wmde-fisch@deploy1003> lilients, wmde-fisch: Backport for [[gerrit:1295454|Disable the creation of synthetic main refs in production (T427484)]] synced to the testservers (see https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mwdebug). Changes can now be verified there.

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-06-01T07:58:57Z] <wmde-fisch@deploy1003> Finished scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1295454|Disable the creation of synthetic main refs in production (T427484)]] (duration: 11m 26s)