Talk:Global message delivery

This global message delivery system (its subpages, underlying code, etc.) is based on the work of MZMcBride at the English Wikipedia, cf. w:Special:PrefixIndex/User:EdwardsBot/.

To-do

• Put source code into a public git repo
  • Now done: <https://github.com/mzmcbride/delivery-bots>. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:03, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
• Add a public log for the bot
• Handle protected pages gracefully
• Assert edits (to ensure the bot isn't editing logged out)
• Add a stop feature?
• Fix up login code for homewiki

--MZMcBride 22:28, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

• Add feature to schedule distribution of multiple messages with a single /Spam page (e.g. if you want to send translated messages). Nemo 05:36, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
• Make it compatible with pages where mw:Extension:LiquidThreads is enabled (example / fixed version ).
• Add a link to this Meta-wiki page on edit summary.

Helder 14:05, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

I striked your second point. Sorry, I thought about it but then forgot to do it; I've added it to the documentation. Nemo 19:30, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

• Support magic words in {{target}}? Bleh. --MZMcBride 13:09, 19 July 2011 (UTC) Done. --MZMcBride 20:53, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

> except that here the duplicate detection doesnt seem to have worked; https://as.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Project:%E0%A7%B0%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%87%E0%A6%9C%E0%A7%B0_%E0%A6%9A%27%E0%A7%B0%E0%A6%BE&action=history&uselang=en

> and a really minor weirdness: on this project the bot doesn't leave an edit summary (but the edit itself is ok) https://eu.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Txokoa&action=history&uselang=en

> another undetected duplicate https://hu.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikip%C3%A9dia:Kocsmafal_%28egy%C3%A9b%29&diff=10917154&oldid=10917139

> this list entry points to a redirect, but the target of the redirect should be working - dont know why the bot didnt post there https://ia.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Taverna

Possibly future investigations. --MZMcBride 13:40, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

• Add a position parameter (support in target template, &section= support in edit code..., try not to break regexen)
• Put the code on GitHub somewhere

--MZMcBride (talk) 01:43, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

• Support different targets based on the topic (e.g. tech messages on technical village pumps). guillom 13:11, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

On bot flags and blocks

The script that the bot relies on tries to set the bot flag when making an edit. Obviously this only works if the bot is in the bot user group on the target wiki. Users are free to add the bot to the bot group if it's annoying them (in RecentChanges, watchlists, whatever). Users are also free to block the bot if they view it as unapproved. It makes no difference to me, it simply means that your wiki won't get deliveries (and you might hurt EdwardsBot's feelings a little). Life is short and I have no intention of trying to figure out the bot policies of 700+ Wikimedia wikis. Do what you will. --MZMcBride 03:28, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Village pumps

Local village pumps are often used for global communications, but it's quite boring to edit them manually. What about implementing a global message delivery for all sort of pages including VP? --Nemo 07:26, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

This should be fixed now. You can use {{target|page=arbitrary page title|site=foo.wikiproject.org}}. --MZMcBride 17:55, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Request subpage

Hi. :) I'm wondering if a request subpage for this system would be possible and have explained that and my reasoning for it at Wikimedia Forum#Global message delivery. Please provide feedback, if you have any. I think it may not be safe for staff to be driving this thing unless we are familiar with work of this sort, and my first experience with it yesterday was pretty terrifying! (It's not like you can easily "undo". :/) --Mdennis (WMF) 12:43, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Minor nitpick...

A little funny actually, but something someone may want to look at. A message recently left on the English Wikipedia's Village Pump (en:Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)#Open Call for 2012 Wikimedia Fellowship Applicants included an apology that the message was in English, and an invitation to translate it. Nice feature for when a translation in a particular language isn't available, but it looks a bit silly in a posting on an English site.--Fyre2387 19:56, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, that's a bit silly. I'm not sure what the answer is to fixing that. I suppose the bot could be fed the input language code and modify the message based on that, but it's an awful lot of additional code complexity for something so minor. Modifying the message would work and would be much simpler. There are two routes, I suppose. One is to modify the message in such a way that you're not apologizing. Something like... "If this message is in a language other than what's commonly used on this wiki, please help by posting a translation of the message below." A better solution would be using some combination of {{CONTENTLANG}} and substitution magic. {{#ifeq:{{CONTENTLANG}}|en|<!-- no message -->|Apologies for posting in English...}} or something. --MZMcBride 05:17, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the hint about {{CONTENTLANG}} (I had been looking for that magic word); will try to do it like that next time. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) 07:39, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

distribution list for Wikisource

I've created Distribution list/Global message delivery/Wikisource for distributing messages to all Wikisource projects (I hope to have put it in the right place). Is it possible to include in the access list some sysops from Wikisource projects? for example Tpt may need it, since it has launched a tool for epub export that is available from all Wikisources, and he may need to tell about updates, etc. And many sysops, me included, are continuously developing new tools that may help a lot if they are shared with the other 'sources, sometimes they are announced on oldwikisource:Wikisource:Scriptorium which is the closest thing to a "central place of discussion", but few users actually look at it, so they miss the news (and complain!). Candalua 23:23, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Makes sense. I have added Tpt to the access list in case he wants to use it, feel free to list other users' names in case they need it. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) 01:57, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

typo

"Report any problems on the labs beta wiki and we'll work to address them before they software is released to the production wikis." --Itu 03:48, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

I have notified MarkAHershberger, who sent out that message. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) 13:49, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

MediaWiki 1.19 deployment message

Hi. I'm planning to use the global message delivery system tomorrow to give local communities a heads-up about the upcoming deployment of MediaWiki 1.19 to Wikimedia sites. The message is at mw:MediaWiki 1.19/Communications#Pre-deployment_heads-up message. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. Thanks. guillom 21:30, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Aren't we going to use the CentralNotice already? This doesn't seem the suitable tool on first thought. Nemo 21:35, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

No, CentralNotice will only be for the maintenance notice, i.e. when the deployment actually happens. My goal here is to let people know in advance, and CentralNotice didn't seem like the right way for that. I'm open to suggestions though. guillom 21:37, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Pasting such a message on village pumps seems too much. We could perhaps recycle the CentralNotice text to link to the blog with an earlier banner and restrict it to sysops or very active users. Ideally, you'd link to a mw.o translatable page so that translations can flow in smoothly if wanted. Nemo 21:39, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Nemo and I had a short IRC discussion about this, pasted below for transparency. guillom 21:50, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

<guillom> Nemo_bis, do you really think it's worth translating the full announcement?
<Nemo_bis> guillom, no
<Nemo_bis> but when you paste English text on VPs, usually someone translates them
<guillom> Ah.
<Nemo_bis> and this is a huge waste of time because then the translation then has to be replicated on several projects etc.
<Nemo_bis> having walls of English texts is hardly appreciated
<guillom> I see.
<guillom> Nemo_bis, so, you think it'd be better to globally post a small message, linking to the announcement on a mediawiki.org page that can be translated if people want to do it?
<Nemo_bis> yes
<Nemo_bis> or use a CN if possible
<guillom> I think you have a point, and I agree with you. Not sure if I'll use CN, but I'll use a shorter version in any case.

An update: the message is now on a dedicated page on mediawiki.org, and it can be translated with the Translate extension (I translated it to French to make sure everything was set up correctly for the other translators). I propose the following short message to be globally posted:

== MediaWiki 1.19 ==

(Apologies if this message isn't in your language.) The Wikimedia Foundation is planning to upgrade MediaWiki
(the software powering this wiki) to the latest version this month. You can help to test it before it is enabled,
to avoid disruption and breakage. More information is available [[:mw:MediaWiki 1.19/Deployment announcement|in
the full announcement]]. Thank you for your understanding.

[[:m:user:guillom|Guillaume Paumier]]

I want to let the wikis know as soon as possible about this, so we don't really have time to organize translations for this short message. I think an untranslated message is less obnoxious on a village pump than in a CentralNotice banner, so I'll probably use the global message delivery system for this later today. I hope this is ok. guillom 12:06, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm ok with it, I hope you don't mind the hassle I added on you. :-) Nemo 12:08, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Not at all, I appreciate your comments and feedback! Without you I wouldn't have realized a short message linking to a longer announcement was better :) guillom 12:10, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Marking directionality of messages

FYI: <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=477067676#RTL_on_talk_pages>. --MZMcBride 20:42, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Requesting Access

I would like to be listed on the Access page. I'm volunteer coordinator for WikiProject India. We have problems contacting our vast member list. For various reasons, other bots have not worked out as yet. I'd be glad if this bot can help. AshLin (talk) 06:01, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Where is the list maintained and how, and what messages would you send? Nemo 11:04, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Access

I would like to have my name added to the access page. I normally send out WikiProject NASCAR's newsletter by MessageDeliveryBot which I cannot access now because of server problems... I normally prepare the newsletter for delivery every month on the 26th day. Here is a list of the recipients. --Nascar1996 (talk) 04:16, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

You probably want EdwardsBot. You can use the global bot, but you'll have to change your recipients list to a different format and keep it here at Meta-Wiki. I'm not sure you want that. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:30, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Sister Classroom for school project

Would like inter-language support/help for Russia language to communicate with interwiki school project on wikiversity at v:User:Orschstaffer#Classroom Assignment. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Orschstaffer (talk) 22:20, 28 June 2012‎

Wikipedia Library (Credo Reference) message

Hi, could someone please check this intended message and the target list for proper markup. Thanks!

Target list: Global_message_delivery/Targets/WikipediaLibraryEditors

Message:

Your Credo Reference account is approved

Good news! You are approved for access to 350 high quality reference resources through Credo Reference

• Fill out the survey with your username and an email address where your sign-up information can be sent.
• If you need assistance, ask User:Ocaasi.
• A quick reminder about using the account: 1) try it out; 2) provide original citation information, in addition to linking to a Credo article; 3) avoid bare links to non-free Credo pages; 4) note "(subscription required)" in the citation, where appropriate. Examples are at W:EN:WP:Credo accounts/Citations.
• Credo would love to hear feedback at W:EN:WP:Credo accounts/Experiences
• If you decide you no longer can or want to make use of your account, donate it back by adding your name here

Thanks for helping make Wikipedia better. Enjoy your research! Cheers, Ocaasi 16:55, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

The format you use on the target list is new to me, did you see the editnotice? --Nemo 17:47, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I've fixed it to use the {target} template. Ocaasi (talk) 19:27, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

More spam

As unbelievable as it can be, there are some users advocating for more spam, see this wikitech-l subthread. (My personal opinion is that this tool is already spamming village pumps too much on small projects and that we need to be more focused.) --Nemo 11:12, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

బహిష్కరణ వేటు

నాపై ఇంగ్లీషు విక్షనరీ [1]లో బహిష్కరణ వేటు వేశారు, సరి అయిన కారణం నాకు తెలియడము లేదు, ఇప్పటివరకు నేను జరిపిన సంభాషణలు క్రింద పొందుపరచు చున్నాను.

---

please note:

Please read Help:Interwiki linking. Best regards --Yoursmile (talk) 11:36, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Yoursmile, It is bring to your notice that my IP No.49.238.51.162was banned from 16:54, 25 October 2012 to 16:54, 28 October 2012 with ID 91400. This hasty, unjustifiable and monarch decision has been taken by Mr.Ruakh. He has given a reason that I have posted a bad edit at the page of Annaladasula. In this connection I want to know some more clarifications and justice from hierarchy to take suitable disciplinary action against Mr.Ruakh for his unlawful decision taken against me. Immediate response from you or others is requested in this matter. with regards. JVRKPRASAD (talk) 14:41, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

14:51, 27 అక్టోబరు 2012 Ruakh (చర్చ | రచనలు) JVRKPRASAD (చర్చ | రచనలు) కై నిరోధపు అమరికలను Mon, 29 Oct 2012 16:54:59 GMT (ఖాతా సృష్టించడాన్ని అశక్తం చేసాం, ఈ-మెయిలుని నిరోధించాం) గడువుతో మార్చారు (Bad edits & pages, e.g. Annaladasula; + bizarre e-mail harassment) It is verfy cruel.JVRKPRASAD (talk)

Ruakh, you please visit my pages and works in all wikis. Links of my pages at Telugu Wiktionary[2] as well as Telugu Wikipedia[3] are furnished here for your information. Further, I have asked clarifications from you for banning action taken by you. But you have not given any reply for my request. Moreover, you have taken simply ban step against me for another one more day duly imposing one more reason by you. It is not fair and appreciable action taken by you . Please note in this regard you may also will be banned by some other hierarchy (officials of this wiki), soon. NB:Lift my ban immediately. JVRKPRASAD (talk) 15:03, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Ruakh,My IP address 49.238.51.162, and ban ID 91554. You lift my ban immediately or discuss with genuine reasons. JVRKPRASAD (talk) 16:33, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Ruakh, You have banned me here for some days due to bad edits at the page[4]. I have asked clarifications, reasons, etc., for banning action by you but not received any comments till this time from your end. It is not genuine action taken by you. Reply soon duly lifting ban against me immediately. JVRKPRASAD (talk) 05:27, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

---

విషయము తెలిసిన వారు స్పందించ గలరు. JVRKPRASAD (talk) 05:54, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Bot not starting?

I loaded the Education Program newsletter and tried to get the bot started... but it hasn't seemed to start in the last 15 minutes. Sadly I am at a conference and am about to be kicked off the wifi, but I will try to check back in on it later. If anyone knows how to get it to start in the interim, the message should be loaded correctly in the spam page, I just need it to start moving. Thanks for any help! -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 23:05, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! -- LiAnna Davis (WMF) (talk) 04:11, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

RTL wikis

Hi, Please repair BOT to wrap text in <div dir="ltr" class="mw-content-ltr"></div> for RTL wikis like (ar,fa,he,...)Yamaha5 (talk) 21:08, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello, it's already in the instructions. --Nemo 23:51, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

it doesn't work!Reza1615 (talk) 15:39, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Alternative bot

Can an alternative bot other than EdwardBot be offered for deployment? EdwardBot's maintainer came to a local project and requested access with the bot function as "God bless America", and then trolled the local project knowing such trolling would lead to the bot continuing to be blocked. An alternative bot, ideally controlled by the WMF, that can delivery global messages not specifically targeting English language Wikipedia users would be much appreciated. --LauraHale (talk) 13:56, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Laura, do you have some links showing what happened, or was this in private email etc.? -Pete F (talk) 22:27, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

@Peteforsyth, Sorry about the delat. It is available n:en:Wikinews:Bots#EdwardsBot_.28talk_.C2.B7_contribs.29 for one part of it. n:en:Wikinews:Bots#EdwardsBot_.28talk_.C2.B7_contribs.29_2 is the god bless America comment. Because the bot maintainer is actively hostile towards our project and refuses to comply with local policy of having an off button, has implied they would inject bad code if allowed on our project... we really do need an alternative option for global message delivery. :( Any assistance in getting an alternative would be much appreciated because we're sometimes completely left out of the loop unless some one comes and human edits to inform us. :( --LauraHale (talk) 02:48, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

The bot was indefinitely blocked a few years ago. I tried requesting that the bot be unblocked. The people at the English Wikinews freaked out (a few times, I think), without any good reason. --MZMcBride (talk) 09:37, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Translate your messages!

Could you just have your messages translated before you send them (including all related pages)? Contrary to common belief English is NOT a lingua franca that everyone understands. There is translatewiki.net. You could perhaps use that. But consider also that if your message only links to articles in English, your message will be lost (worse yet: the page has been translated and you offer an English page...). --Nedergard (talk) 18:26, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

The bot currently doesn't support language-targeted delivery: remember that it's a very simple (yet powerful) tool built by a volunteer to compensate the complete lack of any cross-wiki communication system. Additionally, translatewiki.net is not suitable for such a task, 1) because it doesn't want to translate content, 2) because adding stuff to it requires code changes that need some days in the best case.

In my opinion, delivered messages (except newsletters one subscribes to) should basically be just a link to a translatable page here on Meta or on mediawiki.org, with the least amount of text possible: just what's needed to convince someone to click (and translate). Any suggestion for this?

Otherwise, if Help:CentralNotice/Translations works, we'll probably be using discreet CentralNotice messages more, with the same logic that stewards use to restrict messages to very active users? --Nemo 09:00, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

RTL wikis Directions 2

Hi, Please repair BOT to wrap text in <div dir="ltr" class="mw-content-ltr"></div> for RTL wikis like (ar,fa,he,...)Yamaha5 (talk) 19:09, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

The bot is controlled by Global message delivery/Spam. Individual users should add that wrapper as appropriate. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:30, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Any movement on alternative delivery?

Any movement on the issues discussed in the alternative section? We are working on developing a mulit-language newsletter for Wikinews (covering multiple language Wikinews projects), but as the non-WMF user run global delivery bot (which is run by some one who has implied they would insert anti-Wikinews code into the bot) is blocked locally for non-compliance with bot policy (no off switch, no clear details on what the bot will do, how it functions, what its functions are), we are left in a situation where this cannot be done. We are also left in a situation where locally, we do not get any notifications from meta that are globally delivered. Is there any movement on this? Are there any alternative global message delivery bots that can be utilized? --LauraHale (talk) 23:23, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Not at the moment. Echo will hopefully replace global message delivery one day (cf. bugzilla:35306). --MZMcBride (talk) 15:24, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Delivery bug

Wednesday, I receive on my talk this message [5], but I'm not on the subscribe list for this notification [6].

Regards, --Jitrixis (talk) 12:48, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Yes, someone accidentally sent the GLAM newsletter to the Wikidata distribution list. Sorry about that. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:30, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Interwiki links II

Hi, while Global messages are helpful, there _is_ a difference between [[en:Apple]] and [[:en:Apple]]. The first link is used for interwiki links (now not so much, because of using Wikidata rather), the second one is a link to some other language version in text. Messages from EdwardsBot keep containing (at least at Czech Wikipedia) the first ones on places they should have the second variant. Please try to make sure which one is used where; otherwise the readability of the messages goes rapidly down. Thanks --19:07, 23 June 2013 (UTC), Utar (talk)

Please forward all links through Meta to be safe. PiRSquared17 (talk) 01:29, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Terms of service?

There is a message on the delivery page that says "Effective July 10, 2013, by using global message delivery, you agree to the terms set forth here.", but the link on "here" leads to nowhere, so I don't know which terms of service I should agree to...--Micru (talk) 19:19, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Late reply (didn't see this!): It's the editnotice here. Alternatively, MediaWiki:Editnotice-0-Global message delivery-Status. PiRSquared17 (talk) 01:27, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Багатомовність / sending messages to village pumps in multiply languages

Вітаю. Чи підтримує вже бот надсилання багатьма мовами? Якщо так (а судячи з Тех. новин, це таки так), то, я гадаю, варто б прийняти якесь правило, що змушуватиме спершу виставляти текст до перекладу та сповіщати перекладачів перш ніж надсилати його (можливо, за винятком ДУЖЕ термінових повідомлень, які й кілька годин не зачекають). Як зазначено вище, не всі знають англійську. Коли половина сільської помпи проекту рідною мовою є текстом незнайомою мовою, то це дратує.
Hi. Does bot already support sending in multiply languages? If so (that seems to be true per Tech News) we should create some rule that will force to put text to translation and notify translators before posting it (perhaps, save VERY urgent messages that can't wait even several hours). As it stated above not everybody speaks English. It is anoying when half of village pump of project in your native language is in unknown language.
--Base (talk) 23:41, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

I fully agree with Base. -- Ата ^(talk) 05:45, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

WikiData newsletter

Hello, GMD,
I'm not sure why but your delivery of WikiData weekly summaries has become very irregular. I received #72, #73, #74, #75, #76, #77 then nothing until #80, and then nothing after that. The most recent issue was #82 whose delivery, I've been told, was interrupted by a delivery order of the Signpost newsletter so it was only received by a portion of subscribers.

It defeats the purpose of having a mailing list if you need to go find copies of the newsletters on other users' Talk Pages and copy and paste them to your own. Liz (talk) 17:35, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree that this is strange. MZMcBride, do you know why this might have happened? PiRSquared17 (talk) 18:05, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

As of November 1, this whole system is unsupported. I should probably just shut it down, but MassMessage was inexplicably delayed. Take it up with Terry. He delayed this roll-out for two weeks. The bot is a bit sensitive, the MediaWiki Web API is a bit sensitive, and people do all kinds of craziness in the "spam" page (such as removing the source tag) all of which likely end up to missing or duplicate postings. Wikidata/Newsletter/Archive looks flawless, though, so perhaps this is specific to Liz? --MZMcBride (talk) 21:51, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi Liz,

If you'd included any of these three links, it would've made it easier to track down your issue:

• https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Global_message_delivery/Spam&oldid=6233215
• https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_message_delivery/Targets/Wikidata
• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Liz

Though I realize you may be unfamiliar with Global message delivery/Spam. As a general rule, always include a link when starting any talk page thread. :-)

Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Liz&action=history makes it clear what the issue likely is here: your talk page is, um, fucking huge. It's currently 426,467 bytes. My English Wikipedia talk page is almost as bad, but if EdwardsBot weren't posting to my talk page, that would be the number one suspicion. As I said earlier, Wikidata/Newsletter/Archive looks pretty good to me, though I wonder if there are other pages that are being missed. A page size of over 400,000 bytes is pretty bad. Large pages are difficult for bots and humans alike. We both should archive our talk pages. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:51, 3 November 2013 (UTC)