Wikimedia Bugzilla is closed!

[ Summary ]

An extension allowing administrators (or a relevant group) to set account creation throttle rules directly in MediaWiki.


[ Use case ]

MediaWiki currently contains an account creation limitation per IP per hour.

When an event like a Wikipedia workshop is planned by the community, the current workflow is:
(1) open a bug on Bugzilla
(2) edit wmf-config/throttle.php (operations/mediawiki-config repository)
(3) deploy the new configuration

See also [[wikitech:Increasing account creation threshold]].

This workflow have two issues:
(1) it duplicates the work (community member notes all the configuration information on Bugzilla, another person has to rewrite it in the config file)
(2) it is difficult to get last minute configuration deployment, especially at European time or the week-ends.

This last six weeks, at least two throttle requests weren't deployed when the event started.


[ Proposal ]

* An extension to allow the community to manage directly there throttle rules.
* As UI, a special page with three views to:
** Create new rule (or edit existing rule)
** View current rules (with edit/delete actions)
** Confirm rule deletion

Workflow will then become:
(1) ask a person having the relevant user right to go to the throttle interface
(2) add the event informations


[ Advantages ]

* Community can directly set the limits, when they want;
* Wikimedia operations isn't involved anymore.


[ Drawbacks ]

Used in the Wikimedia context, if the event involves several wikis (and often a throttle on Wikimedia Commons is also required), it could require to set throttle rule on several wikis or to ask participants to create their account on the main event wiki before to use SUL. Another solution could also to keep the current configuration workflow as fallback for multiwiki events.


[ Idea credits ]

Thank you to Ariel (apergos) for this nice suggestion.