The EventStream appears to be firing events related to template propagation and assigning them to the last editor to make an edit to the page, implying that an editor made an edit which added or removed links when all that happened was a template update propagated to a page.
One such example is below:
```
event: message
id: [{"topic":"eqiad.mediawiki.page-links-change","partition":0,"timestamp":1550573806001},{"offset":-1,"partition":0,"topic":"codfw.mediawiki.page-links-change"}]
data: {"added_links":[{"external":false,"link":"/wiki/Edge_(video_game)"},{"external":false,"link":"/wiki/Talk:Edge_(video_game)/GA1"}],"database":"enwiki","meta":{"domain":"en.wikipedia.org","dt":"2019-02-19T10:56:46+00:00","id":"0c8d2b30-3435-11e9-b0e4-1866da993d2e","request_id":"XGl-pQpAAEIAAA4B8rcAAACJ","schema_uri":"mediawiki/page/links-change/1","topic":"eqiad.mediawiki.page-links-change","uri":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tampon_Run","partition":0,"offset":5705026},"page_id":45403409,"page_is_redirect":false,"page_namespace":1,"page_title":"Talk:Tampon_Run","performer":{"user_edit_count":20912,"user_groups":["abusefilter","sysop","*","user","autoconfirmed"],"user_id":15991542,"user_is_bot":false,"user_registration_dt":"2011-12-29T02:44:39Z","user_text":"Samwalton9"},"removed_links":[{"external":false,"link":"/wiki/Amy_Rose"},{"external":false,"link":"/wiki/Deus_Ex:_Mankind_Divided"},{"external":false,"link":"/wiki/List_of_Sonic_the_Hedgehog_characters"},{"external":false,"link":"/wiki/Talk:Deus_Ex:_Mankind_Divided/GA1"},{"external":false,"link":"/wiki/Talk:List_of_Sonic_the_Hedgehog_characters"}],"rev_id":648195620}
```
This event relates to a page I created (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tampon_Run), but it has received no edits since 2015. The rev_id relates to the last edit I made there (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=648195620). There are no RecentChangesLinked for that timestamp, and a cursory glance through RecentChanges didn't find anything around that timestamp that would correspond to the edit. I take it, therefore, that this has something to do with the cache of the WikiProject:Video games template on that page. Indeed, some of the data in that event corresponds to a recent edit to Template:WPVG announcements, which is transcluded in the WP:VG banner (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3AWPVG_announcements&type=revision&diff=883776243&oldid=882982540).
See my comment below for a more concrete example of a template being updated and then propagating through the encyclopedia.
There are two overlapping issues here:
- Events should contain data explaining whether the event relates to a 'real' change, or template propagation.
- If the event is for template propagation, the correct (or perhaps no) metadata should be attached, instead of the username/timestamp/etc. of the last edit to that page.