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Remove ArticleGuidanceRedirectEntryPointTitles
Closed, ResolvedPublic2 Estimated Story Points

Description

Goal

Remove the ArticleGuidanceRedirectEntryPointTitles configuration and the code path it drives, so that Article Guidance no longer redirects visitors away from arbitrary wiki pages. Special:NewArticle stays reachable, and the red-link redirect is unaffected.

Context

The setting was added for the A/B experiment: a share of users landing on a community page such as Wikipedia:ArticleWizard were redirected to Special:NewArticle, which gave the experiment a second entry point.

Article Guidance is now a regular feature, not an experiment. Communities that want editors to use it can link to Special:NewArticle explicitly from their own pages, which is more transparent than silently redirecting a page they own.

Solution

1. mediawiki-config — remove all mentions of wgArticleGuidanceRedirectEntryPointTitles

2. ArticleGuidance extension — remove:

  • the ArticleGuidanceRedirectEntryPointTitles entry in extension.json
  • RedLinkRedirectHandler::isEntryPointPage() and the "Case 3" branch in onBeforeInitialize(), including its TODO comment
  • the 'ArticleGuidanceRedirectEntryPointTitles' => [] override in tests/phpunit/integration/RedLinkRedirectHandlerTest.php
  • the "Entry-point redirect" section and the config-table row in docs/red-link-redirect.md
  • the "entry_point" section of docs/instrumentation.md now only carries action_source=redlink

Inform the communities (fr and tr) and entry points redirection is no longer supported and they can update their new articles CTA to link to Special:NewArticle if they so desire.

Acceptance criteria

  • ArticleGuidanceRedirectEntryPointTitles does not exist in the extension, in mediawiki-config, or in the docs; no page other than a red link redirects to Special:NewArticle.
  • The red-link redirect keeps working unchanged on the wikis where ArticleGuidanceRedirectEnabled is true, and entry_point events are still sent for it.
  • Affected communities were notified and have a documented way to link to Special:NewArticle from their wizard pages.

QA plan

On a wiki with ArticleGuidanceRedirectEnabled true (testwiki after the config patch, or a local wiki with the setting still declared):

  1. As a logged-in junior editor, visit the page that used to be an entry point (e.g. Wikipedia:ArticleWizard). The page renders normally, with no redirect and no entry_point event.
  2. Click an in-scope red link. The redirect to Special:NewArticle?newarticletitle=…&source=redlink still happens, and an entry_point event with action_source=redlink is sent.
  3. Visit Special:NewArticle directly, and again with ?source=articlewizard. Both load; the init event reports direct and articlewizard respectively.
  4. Check that setting $wgArticleGuidanceRedirectEntryPointTitles in LocalSettings.claude.php has no effect, confirming nothing reads the key any more.

Event Timeline

Adding to the current board as discussed today

SBisson lowered the priority of this task from Medium to Low.

Change #1342323 had a related patch set uploaded (by Sbisson; author: Sbisson):

[mediawiki/extensions/ArticleGuidance@master] Remove the entry-point redirect configuration

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1342323

Nikerabbit set the point value for this task to 2.Thu, Sep 17, 1:40 PM
Nikerabbit added a project: Essential-Work.

Change #1342323 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/ArticleGuidance@master] Remove the entry-point redirect configuration

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1342323

Nikerabbit changed the task status from Open to In Progress.Tue, Sep 22, 11:10 AM

This is now deployed. The Article Wizard on trwiki's homepage doesn't redirect to Article Guidance anymore.

Change #1345130 had a related patch set uploaded (by Sbisson; author: Sbisson):

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Remove unused config: ArticleGuidanceRedirectEntryPointTitles

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1345130

Change #1345130 merged by jenkins-bot:

[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Remove unused config: ArticleGuidanceRedirectEntryPointTitles

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1345130

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-09-28T13:03:46Z] <sbisson@deploy1003> Started scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1345130|Remove unused config: ArticleGuidanceRedirectEntryPointTitles (T437643)]]

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-09-28T13:07:45Z] <sbisson@deploy1003> sbisson: Backport for [[gerrit:1345130|Remove unused config: ArticleGuidanceRedirectEntryPointTitles (T437643)]] synced to the testservers (see https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mwdebug). Changes can now be verified there.

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-09-28T13:16:44Z] <sbisson@deploy1003> Finished scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1345130|Remove unused config: ArticleGuidanceRedirectEntryPointTitles (T437643)]] (duration: 12m 58s)