Re: New global API rate limits deployed for anonymous requests

>  Please note that in some cases the thumbnails in your tool get
rate-limited; those are in every case I've checked thumbnails at
non-standard sizes[1]. If you start enforcing standard sized thumbs, you
shouldn't see 429s or 403s

For the thumb issue, I believe I'm going to have to do a scan in the tool
DB and replace a bunch of stuff.
The thumb URLs have always been retrieved from the API
`$response['query']['pages'][$filePageIdentifier->getId()]['imageinfo'][0]['thumburl']`
So I can only assume what once worked no longer works (slightly annoying
having to update them all).

I had a similar experience with thumb images used on other sites (including
linked from some blog posts I have written in the past) also failing to
load with 429s due to recent changes, again leading to needing to go and
alter a bunch of old stuff.
As far as I know these thumbs will have always been generated from the
commons UI, so it's slightly annoying to have them break.
It's a shame we havn't / could not leave redirects in place for some period
of time, at least in terms of thumbs used in blogs for example, my posts
would have fixed themselves once the redirect were detected.

There are some regexes folks might find useful in a blog I wrote this
morning if they encounter broken thumbs elsewhere.
https://addshore.com/2026/03/fixing-wikimedia-commons-thumbnail-sized-on-my-blog/
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/P89869

Again, generally fine with all these limits etc and understand they are
needed, I just wish there was less work coming as a result of them in order
to maintain things.

Adam

On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 at 06:49, Giuseppe Lavagetto <[email protected]>
wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 16, 2026 at 11:45 AM Addshore via Wikitech-l <
> [email protected]> wrote:
>
>>
>> I was then also directed toward `Api-User-Agent` and the hcakathon, and
>> implemented this for requests, but still ran into 429 issues.
>>
>> I'll be trying to take a fesh look at this at some point to try and
>> reoslve some issues.
>>
>> wikicrowd essentially makes requests to:
>>  - Thumbnails such as this at 960px resolution
>> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6c/Lake_LA-4-200_Buccaneer_AN1895272.jpg/960px-Lake_LA-4-200_Buccaneer_AN1895272.jpg
>>
>>
>  Please note that in some cases the thumbnails in your tool get
> rate-limited; those are in every case I've checked thumbnails at
> non-standard sizes[1]. If you start enforcing standard sized thumbs, you
> shouldn't see 429s or 403s
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> Giuseppe
>
> [1] See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Common_thumbnail_sizes "current
> standard sizes in wikimedia production"
> --
> Giuseppe Lavagetto
> Principal Site Reliability Engineer, Wikimedia Foundation
>

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