> d) Last I checked, both QIC and IC ship by default with configurations > to use our CDN to serve thumbnails; given the progressive increase in > bandwidth requirements, and the constant saturation of our internet > links, we encourage people to host their own thumbnails if possible; > especially if your site is very popular.
This is a change in policy that has not been previously announced, is not documented on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgUseInstantCommons, and does not match the default behavior of $wgUseInstantCommons. If WMF wants people to do something, they have to actually communicate it. AntiCompositeNumber (they/them) On Thu, Mar 5, 2026, at 01:30, Giuseppe Lavagetto via Wikitech-l wrote: > On Wed, Mar 4, 2026 at 5:00 PM Brian Wolff via Wikitech-l > <[email protected]> wrote: >> Its probably not this rate limit change (i assume its the media limit >> change), but many people have reported this with (quick) instant commons. I >> am aware of at least one site who was able to negotiate an exception to the >> limit. >> >> QuickInstantCommons supports configuring the max cache time, as a first step >> try increasing that significantly. > > To clarify this point a bit, given I see a lot of guesswork in this thread: > > a) In the last year, we progressively started enforcing our user-agent > policy, given that both QIC and IC allow you to set your own > user-agent; if people modify their user-agent to include contact > information, the limit is much higher than if they don't. In fact, not > modifying the User-Agent is in violation of our user-agent policy. > b) Both IC and QIC have the not-so-nice property of being O(N) in the > number of API calls made, with N being the number of images imported; > as Brian said, increasing the caching max time is an inevitable > requirement if you are importing a lot of images > c) It is still possible to get your bot identified; the blocking > message includes an email address to contact to discuss exceptions > d) Last I checked, both QIC and IC ship by default with configurations > to use our CDN to serve thumbnails; given the progressive increase in > bandwidth requirements, and the constant saturation of our internet > links, we encourage people to host their own thumbnails if possible; > especially if your site is very popular. > > None of the above has anything to do with the announcement in this > thread, but rather with the progressive enforcement of our robot policy > over the last year. > > Cheers, > > Giuseppe > -- > Giuseppe Lavagetto > Principal Site Reliability Engineer, Wikimedia Foundation > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/ _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/
