Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Multimedia and Commons/Support null edits

Random proposal ►◄ Multimedia and Commons The survey has concluded. Here are the results!

Support null edits

Problem: Categories set or changed by a template won't occur for very long times - or never.
Proposed solution: Give a possibility to perform null edits for all transclusions of a template
Who would benefit: all users
More comments: must not work immediately, just within a reasonable time
Phabricator tickets:
Proposer: -- sarang♥사랑 13:54, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Noting for the record that this feature is available when calling the mw:API:Purge endpoint with forcerecursivelinkupdate set to true. Should be possible to wrap in a userscript. -FASTILY 00:18, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In my experience, forcerecursivelinkupdate will update the appearance of transcluded templates, but not categories added by templates. For that, an actual null edit on transcluding pages is required. I use en:User:Ahecht/Scripts/refresh to accomplish that. -- Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:15, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
forcerecursivelinkupdate is supposed to update the categories, as the categorylinks are part of the "link update" its name refers to. If it's not, that's a bug. Anomie (talk) 23:47, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There is also w:user:Frietjes/masspurge.js. ~~~~
User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 18:27, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Categories set or changed by a template won't occur for very long times - or never. What about finding a fix for this instead? I'd wish it, too. --Matěj Suchánek (talk) 09:08, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Kind of wondering why this is in Multimedia and Commons. This impacts every use of categories. --Izno (talk) 06:29, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 18:49, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I thought this was done by default when a template is updated? Otherwise, it is quite simple to write a pywikibot script that goes through template uses and null edits it - but that's not good for the servers if it's already being done. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:32, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This does happen eventually for some templates, but the system is imperfect and pages get missed sometimes. For example, I ran a null edit script to clear w:Category:CS1 maint: discouraged parameter in October 2021, when the category still had ~20,000 pages despite the code to populate it having been removed in May. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 18:49, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Or someone could fix task T132467 or task T157670. Null edits to every page are needed periodically, and my understanding is that the technical implementation of it is not difficult. Someone just needs to make it happen. Jonesey95 (talk) 22:26, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I imagine another suitable solution here for the problem described would just be to have changes occour faster once templates are changed. ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 22:49, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

Support * Pppery * _{it has begun} 18:49, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I do not want, that null edits will fill file or category histories. Taivo (talk) 19:53, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Null edits do not show up in page histories or watchlists. Jonesey95 (talk) 22:30, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly as Jonesey95 said. NULL edits are invisible. Valerio Bozzolan (talk) 14:58, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support one way or another. It is probably easiest to implement one of the fixes described in the phab tickets linked above. Jonesey95 (talk) 22:30, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support The best implementation isn't clear, but please provide something better than making a JWB list and clicking Save on dummy edits. Certes (talk) 01:32, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Libcub (talk) 22:53, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support We need to purge this page often for technical reasons. Thingofme (talk) 09:56, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose KingAntenor (talk) 06:49, 2 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ayumu Ozaki (talk) 09:55, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Ciao • Bestoernesto • ✉ 17:07, 6 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Valerio Bozzolan (talk) 14:57, 11 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]