New UK cookie rules and MediaWiki

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David Gerard

10 May 2011 10 May '11

3:22 p.m.

http://www.ico.gov.uk/~/media/documents/library/Privacy_and_electronic/Prac… New rules: only cookies that are "strictly necessary" may be set without permission. All others require explicit permission from the user. These will be quite a lot of work (to say the least) for commercial sites with ads to comply with. But UK-based MediaWiki sites should be OK, shouldn't they? Does MediaWiki use cookies for anything other than login functionality? Not sure if the "You must have cookies enabled to log in to SITENAME" bit will need rewording for tediously strict compliance. - d.

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Chad

10 May 10 May

3:26 p.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] New UK cookie rules and MediaWiki

On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 11:22 AM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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But UK-based MediaWiki sites should be OK, shouldn't they? Does MediaWiki use cookies for anything other than login functionality? Not sure if the "You must have cookies enabled to log in to SITENAME" bit will need rewording for tediously strict compliance.

MediaWiki core only uses cookies for logging in, and nothing else. Lots of extensions probably use cookies for stuff, so I can't speak for them. -Chad

Brion Vibber

5:25 p.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] New UK cookie rules and MediaWiki

On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 8:26 AM, Chad <innocentkiller(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 11:22 AM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

MediaWiki core only uses cookies for logging in, and nothing else. Lots of extensions probably use cookies for stuff, so I can't speak for them.

Broadly speaking we can divide our cookie usages into: * login/session-related stuff (mostly seems to fall under falls under the necessary exception) * saved state/preferences ('necessary' exception does.... not? apply...?) * tracking cookies for A/B testing and related metrics gathering -- this'd be the most relevant actual stuff, but today should sit mostly in optional extensions. Shouldn't affect UK-based third parties, but one should consider how Wikimedia's own tracking setup works and if it's clear and consensual enough. Quick survey from a quick search-around for use of setCookie, document.cookie, or $.cookie: core: * session cookie * old-session-has-been-logged-out cookie * saved login token cookie * last-used username cookie * TOC show/hide state * some sort of session / buckets infrastructure to aid other scripts? AddMediaWizard: firefogg preferences ArticleFeedback: rating state, something about 'pitches'? CategoryBrowser: seems to save some sort of state CentralAuth: login session state CentralNotice: banner hiding state ClickTracking: session ID for monitoring a/b testing DismissibleSiteNotice: dismissal state FundraiserPortal: not exactly sure what LanguageSelector: language selection state MobileRedirect: mobile redirection preference Narayam: input method preference OggHandler: player preference OpenID: last-used OpenID provider SecurePoll: something or other WebFonts: web fonts preference WikiEditor: toolbar selection/expansion state, TOC sidebar state Vector: collapsable navigation state, something that appears to be a/b testing infrastructure for section edit links tests -- brion

Platonides

11 May 11 May

7:51 p.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] New UK cookie rules and MediaWiki

Chad wrote:

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On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 11:22 AM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

MediaWiki core only uses cookies for logging in, and nothing else. Lots of extensions probably use cookies for stuff, so I can't speak for them. -Chad

Well, you could argue that the UserName cookie is not strictly necessary (specially when logged out), although you would too have a hard time explaining a judge why the LoggedOut one is needed. However, I think that a disclaimer at Special:UserLogin explaining that by logging in you store a few cookies should be enough. I welcome that privacy is being taken more seriously, though.

David Gerard

8:27 p.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] New UK cookie rules and MediaWiki

On 11 May 2011 20:51, Platonides <Platonides(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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However, I think that a disclaimer at Special:UserLogin explaining that by logging in you store a few cookies should be enough.

Should only require altering that little piece of text. (Can someone just do this, or should a bug be filed? Will it be marked WONTFIX?)

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I welcome that privacy is being taken more seriously, though.

I was most amused by Google and Facebook claims that not filling people's PCs with a zillion tracking cookies would deeply compromise security. I can see a Wikipedia mailing list nitpicker trying to substantiate the claim, but not anyone weighing up the matter sensibly. - d.

Platonides

9:27 p.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] New UK cookie rules and MediaWiki

David Gerard wrote:

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On 11 May 2011 20:51, Platonides <Platonides(a)gmail.com> wrote:

However, I think that a disclaimer at Special:UserLogin explaining that by logging in you store a few cookies should be enough.

Should only require altering that little piece of text. (Can someone just do this, or should a bug be filed? Will it be marked WONTFIX?)

That's a message, so that would follow the normal procedure of editing MediaWiki:<whatever> Or using translatewiki / nagging your favourite developer if what you want is changing the default.

Hiram Clawson

9:41 p.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] MySQL character set choice

Good Afternoon MediaWiki Fans: I'm migrating our installations to a new machine with upgraded everything. I'm wondering of the MySQL character set choices are important. My older installation is: MySQL 5.0.22-standard and the new one is: 5.5.11 The older MySQL installation reports character sets: $ mysqlCmd -e "show variables;" mysql | egrep -i "character|collation" character_set_client latin1 character_set_connection latin1 character_set_database latin1 character_set_filesystem binary character_set_results latin1 character_set_server latin1 character_set_system utf8 character_sets_dir /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ collation_connection latin1_swedish_ci collation_database latin1_swedish_ci collation_server latin1_swedish_ci The new MySQL system reports: $ mysqlCmd -e "show variables;" mysql | egrep -i "character|collation" character_set_client utf8 character_set_connection utf8 character_set_database latin1 character_set_filesystem binary character_set_results utf8 character_set_server latin1 character_set_system utf8 character_sets_dir /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ collation_connection utf8_general_ci collation_database latin1_swedish_ci collation_server latin1_swedish_ci Is anything in the system going to care that some latin1 types are now utf8 ? --Hiram

Platonides

11:34 p.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] MySQL character set choice

Hiram Clawson wrote:

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(...)

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Is anything in the system going to care that some latin1 types are now utf8 ? --Hiram

No. You can set the collation per table, and MediaWiki can use latin1, binary or utf8 (it needs to be configured correctly). You only need to be careful with not corrupting the dump. You may need to set --default-character-set See http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Backing_up_a_wiki#Character_set

Bruce Whealton

12 May 12 May

12:34 a.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] Removing a batch of pages

Hello, I recently found that one of the wikis that I thought was being maintained was not. Now, I see some 50+ spam posts. 1) Is there a quick way to delete a group of articles? 2) Can one delete/ban/block users and delete all their articles also? 3) I did also have a situation where I was displaying an article list with the extension that does this. I noticed that the front page that Displayed the most recent articles using dynamic article list, was displaying links to articles that I deleted. When you clicked on the links they were dead. Isn't there a way to make this extension not display articles that have been deleted? Thanks, Bruce ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Bruce Whealton, Owner Future Wave Designs FOAF: http://whealton.info/BruceWhealton1/foaf.rdf Vcard: http://whealton.info/BruceWhealton1/brucewhealtonvcard.html Web Design and Development http://FutureWaveDesigns.com http://futurewavedesigns.com/wordpress/ Web Technology wiki: http://futurewavedesigns.com/w/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Jon Davis

1:54 a.m.

New subject: [Mediawiki-l] Removing a batch of pages

I had this same problem. I made a list of all the pages in a text file then fed them to ./maintenance/deleteBatch.php [2]. These does exactly like it sounds, delete the pages. I haven't bothered to be block the spam users because, at least so far, they never come back to use them after the initial spam edit. As for DPL. If you hit a page with ?action=purge attached to the URL (IE http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Template:Latest_news?action=purge ), it will dump all the removed pages. -Jon [1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:DeleteBatch.php On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 17:34, Bruce Whealton < bwhealton(a)futurewavedesigns.com> wrote:

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-- Jon [[User:ShakataGaNai]] / KJ6FNQ http://snowulf.com/ http://ipv6wiki.net/